On a blueprint stark
as a lunar footprint,
my father signed up
for its perfect math:
plots of earth wedged
into open arcs,
arenas unmarred
yet by tragedy.
Even then, I moved
in exponentials. Things
blurred or bent in me,
wrecked the lines,
found romance in spandrels
where misfits played,
the spillover edges
of trapped space.
Broken is better,
inevitable as cells
that spilt, subdivide,
thin until frayed
tissues collapse
and seepage sets in,
the way children leave
on well-lit roads
out of the still dance
of perfect math,
those centers that
will not hold.