Lula

We’ve been at this for years.
So long, it’s a kind of marriage.
Why not believe the shadow

feels affection for the flesh?
That it longs to be bodied, that it dreams
of all it could do for me?

Sometimes I imagine handing it
a bag of groceries from the trunk
and sending it into the house.

We’ve been at this so long,
it’s grown on me. It grows,
blurry doppelganger

so nondescript, it’s hard to know
even close-up—all outline, nothing
inside. What is a shadow

if not vestigial? A partner only
in a certain light? I’ve thought
about calling it Lula, the name

I’d been saving for another
child but will never need.
We’ve been at this long enough—

so long, it feels like marriage.
We touch without touch,
take turns outgrowing one another.