I fear the day of understanding my body

for what it really is: floors on floors

of chambers, vessels, & micro equations.

Answers, too right or wrong. A view like that

would prove I’m far from a problem solver

& thus a mismatch for the physicist

I’ve invited over for a DIY sushi dinner.

But lucky for me, our bodies don’t have to

solve each other beyond coming out stories &

his imitation of how I hold my chopsticks

(crossed like scissors), a configuration

my mother once laughed, of high nobility.

I imagine he’ll call sushi mathematical

while I look for the good knife. I imagine he’ll say

if each roll were a problem, its answer would rely

on a systematic balance of texture & flavor.

I won’t expect him to explain how I remind him of

‘simple harmonic motion’—a phrase to describe

how some objects, however displaced, always

return to a central position, like a child on a swing.

I won’t expect to spend the next day thinking about

my younger self, who wanted nothing

more than to circle over the swing set without gravity

breaking him down with its thud. If only the physicist

had been there to say I’d need the unyielding straightness

of wooden rods to send my body where I wanted it most

& through playground science, practice my ascension.

A vial of flyspeck

lessons what all

men are made of:

threadbare

torqued to tube.

For their study,

imagine this glass

like a stem

& its stopper,

the bit lip.