bill and the electric girl.

When we first met
he introduced himself,
“bill”, he said
(with a “sort-of” smile)

just like that,
no capital letter at the start of his name
only a dry
mechanical
lower case “b”

I joked, “Ohhhh, you sound expensive”

he tilted his head and kind of moved his eyes

so I said, “bill, as in check, get it?”
and then I said,
“forget it, it was a cheesy joke”

it took a whole minute then he laughed

he reminded me of a robot with rusting wires
talk-king
walk-king
move-ving
not really alive

I told him once, you smile like a robot
in fact the only time
I’d see him come alive
Is when he was about to plug into some
electric girl.