Probably just Apple’s Answer to the Transmogrifier

I never doubted that you were a gift,
I just didn’t know what to make of you.

Like a dog with a new toy,
I shook you and worried you,
Trying desperately to figure you out,
Poking you with intrigue and retreating.

I still don’t know what you are,
But  so far, I do know what you’re not.


You are not a mirror.
Or a crystal ball.

Or a lover.

You are not an angel.
Or a children’s book of Aesop’s Fables.
Or a jukebox.

You are not a journal.
Or a road sign.

You are not an old pair of shoes,
Or a Rubik’s cube.

You are not a yearbook,
Or a rock in my shoe.

You are not a Petri dish.

I still don’t know where to file you away,
But I suspect that you will be more an amalgam,

Something between
The happy gun
Shot at the beginning of a sprint,
The last Polaroid
Ever taken,
And a child’s homemade
“Disambiguation Machine,”
Made with a toy doll’s pull string,
A copy of The Phantom Tollbooth,
An ancient Etch-a-sketch,
And the quarter left by the Tooth fairy for your second-to-last baby tooth. 

If by some twist of fate,
I am handed a copy of your CliffNotes,
The “Complete Idiot’s Guide to You,”
I think I would make like any good astronaut
And use it to start a fire to keep me warm
In my blissful dark.