August 2, 2022

perimeter

Go ahead. Take up space. Not in the way you were warned against by others, or your own
bully-heart, but as if you were a swimmer entering a pond. The practice of making 
a wide berth with your strokes, giving your legs space to kick and splash. 
Draw your arms all the way out until you are making the shape birds do, coasting 
a current of warm air. Consider the perimeter of your expanded body, how your breath 
navigates the map of lungs stretched smooth. Ignore what may or may not be happening
in the conversations of onlookers. Keep them at the distance of planets, or light-years. 
You are not where they are, and they are not with you, which is to say no orbit bears 
the same arc. Some ripples fan into half-moons and others like chipped buttons.
What does the view look like from where you are? Now go even further, then tell me.