We all stand
on the same polka dotted mat.

You stomp the colored spots
like they’re disco-balls. You’re effortless,
the game’s commands flowing through
your veins. Your instinct: Graceful dance.

I start
with the center,
but one spot cannot hold two limbs!
So all that comes next
is a jumble-

a rocking side to side, in which
side can mean up, crunch,
diagonal,
stretch, bend, torque, push,
then freeze.

You get low, and you breakdance,
but I am all too aware
of where X Axis meets Y,

of how I twist instead of orbit
‘round their shake of hands.

Because unlike you, sometimes I fall.
Sometimes, I break. My throat
gets stuck between two limbs.

Sometimes I land so far
off the mat on which we all stand,
that I give my loved ones
PTSD.

The mat stretches the whole earth ‘round,
so a mile is as a mile to you,
but my inches are kilometers.
They call it “Self-Aware.”

Moves are dangerous;
Mine are precarious.
My mat seems to stretch a whole
exercise ball ‘round.
There’s a slip and a slope;
It exponentially steepens.

So I start with the center,
where I cannot stay or even land,

and create a constellation
with my jagged ebb and flow,

orbiting the heart of the graph
in a twist and a jumble.