Perhaps your childhood pediatrician
who gentled his hand on your back as if you would move,
you would not have moved,
who crossed an incalculable distance, sweet hair
and magnified ear more animate
than any you had known: he was listening,
not to you, but through you.
Perhaps a dance, hands folded, arms
extended, pose distinct as fractal,
flower inflorescence, snowflake, fact,
or everyone’s legs-up-the-wall, feet proffered,
knees and calves slightly wider or narrower,
and the space between—if you could read
a story in that arabesque,
what matters most to them, to you.