Glitch

Nick Laird

More than ample a deadfall of one meter eighty to split

my temple apart on the herringbone parquet and crash

the operating system, tripping an automated shutdown

in the casing and halting all external workings of the moist

robot I inhabit at the moment: I am out cold and when

my eyes roll in again I sit on the edge of the bed and tell

you just how taken I am with the place I’d been, had been

compelled to leave, airlifted mid-gesture, mid-sentence, risen

of a sudden like a bubble or its glisten or a victim snatched

and bundled out, helplessly, from sunlight, the usual day,

and all particulars of life there fled except the sense that stays

with me for hours and hours that I was valuable and needed there.