Seeing You

I am walking along the unsuspecting pavement
when it’s rudely pulled out from under me, leaving me to tread
the ceramic blue sky, my breath stopping and starting like an engine
choking on dry winter air—
only, the thing is,  my mind is one of the sharpest in the country
for detecting bullshit,
and my Catholic body, thinking back to long stretches of church and physics class,
points out that my location currently defies both God and gravity.
Whoever it was that tipped me over
recovers fast and
replaces the blacktop
quite messily
back to where it
kind of was.
And I crash down like some
demented bird that thought it was an angel,
land so hard that my heart
leaps out and flops around, doing its best impression of a dying fish
just outside of the reach of my fingertips, so that I look like a fool
while I give my bow-legged chase
and call out to it awkwardly, swinging my arms about
as if to threaten embrace.

That is what
seeing you is like.