She doesn't wear sweaters anymore;
the thread unravels at the edges
when she needs things to stay together.
Every group of things she sees
comes unstuck in space; a sheet
of glass over everything
magnifying what's underneath, so
as she sits letting droplets hit her back
one after the other on the floor
the bathroom tiles file past her eyes
like crystalline symmetries,
footsteps in the snow fold over
on themselves, glide planes on high,
her own feet are a rotary inversion
of the version of her that mirrors her walk
upside down, her own feet
are always the ground
she walks on, always moving,
always soothing and then falling through.
To see the world on the scale
of atoms,
to break down
the random, to battle the chasm,
to search for structural integrity
in her enthusiasm
so she can know it will hold her up
and yet everywhere opposites attract.
On the scale of atoms, positive
and negative, north and south,
an attraction and repulsion,
and evolutionary revulsion
that she can't make herself feel.
Ratted out by evolution, still
she zooms in on everything
to try to see a reason she still exists.