Sibling Revelry

 
 
                             When the twins
                             were young
between them they nurtured
                    an imaginary third.
                             Triplets
 
incognito, two in the flesh, one
                             a specter
                     of introspection. If
                one fell into distraction,
 
their hologrammatic sibling
                             lost half
                             its face. If
                    both ceased concentrating,
                 their
tertiary copy vanished, stranding them
 
                             briefly in
                             twinhood.
                       Abandonment
                  would blow lightly
           on their foreheads
 
and they’d each panic: Quick, close
                             our eyes,
                            imagine.
                      Cull our clone
                 from the amorphous yawn
 
of shared consciousness once again.
                             And there their
                             kin would appear
                        unbothered, blinking,
                   waving. Hey,
 
what’ve you been up to? The twins
                             would sigh
                             in relief to
                       have someone
                   hypothetical to snub
 
in the interim. It’d always been so: the ease
                             and fun
                             of lording over
                        our equals by birth
 
when loneliness was always an option.

                            Bottom of a

                            pecking order

bumming a lower rung to cling from.