from A Field Guide to the Body

for tara

What you don't know is that
this body can collapse at any moment.
We are unable to predict this fragility,
the moment when the body
will have to reorganize itself.

In the museum you were so kind
when my knee gave out.
You wheeled me around
while I chased the boy in and out
of the fake earth exihibits
with my voice.
Believe me, I may look weak
but I have my own system
of running around.

From this vantage
the world is more legible.
My akewardness is no longer
a show destracting from the glorious
minerals, the long dead animals,
the dinosaur bones.
Rather, I am completely ignored.
The only noise I make is
the bulkiness of this machine,
you running me into ankles.

In the chair, I am no longer a threat to society.