a word comes to mind: terri,

it comes bidden or unannounced

from the conscious or unconscious,

synapses fire, triggering key taps,

and suddenly--there it is, it exists,

a word, bare of all but its existence,

without descriptors, without character. 
it is a paper doll waiting to be clothed

at the will or whim of the keyboardist.

eventually, enough synapses having fired,

enough keys tapped, a world is born

where once there was emptiness,

a world of names: terri, lynn, marketa,

marcy, colin; and places: an apartment,

a city, an unnamed vineyard, a patio;

more characters: professor eliot, colin's

grandfather, antoinette, yenny; more places,

more descriptors, more events, more life. 

no longer paper dolls, a kind of corporeal

reality emerges: voices, movement, action—

sentience—the keyboardist begins to react

rather than direct, listens to the voices,

detects false notes and untruths,

nudges the voices and untruths

toward what sounds right and is right,

because, by now, there is a reality

with all the accompanying affections

and engagements between the keyboardist

and the keyed, and it makes sense,

a bond has been forged and nurtured,

an otherworldly, supranatural bond

in which the characters on both sides

of the keyboard understand their roles. 

the affection, though one-way, is real,

no less real than the affection a child,

engaged in the world of clothing and

bringing to life a paper doll, does feel.