She hadn’t meant to do it. It had been an accident. The desk lamp looked at her with eyes that she could not see. She didn’t move, hoping that if she stayed still, not even breathing, that it would undo what she had not meant to do. But the lamp still twisted around, those invisible eyes looking at its own chord, questioning it’s existence, or perhaps its purpose. The lamp hopped forward ad the girl yelped. The chord pulled, tight from the wall, but did not give. It jumped again and the girl found the wall at her back. This time the chord gave and the lamp hopped forward to the desk’s edge. The lamp hopped again, teetering on the desk’s edge, then fell forward. Again the girl shrieked, but this time for the lamp. The object hit the ground hard, light bulb shattering against the wood. The child shrieked again, tears in her eyes. Her mother raced into the room to find her child weeping over the destroyed lamp.
“I let it die mommy,” the child wept into her mother’s bosom. “I gave it life, then I took it away.”