Linseed oil

This world, is made up of things, things:
like that robot fish on you tube
silver knobs twisting
movement as real as anything at sea, and
fingers pressed against aquarium glass--
a little girl--
who'll grow up remembering a jeweled fish
swimming lopsided
because
things are real, no matter how much people tell her it was an illusion.
Sylvia Plath lied
when she said: you,
can't put toothbrushes in poems
Linseed oil, for example, has memory,
they will always remember their first contact with light
If
that is true, how different are we?

The toothbrush is real,
it is this poem
that is not