I saw a girl at the skating rink
and that is the whole trouble.
Not that she spoke to me.
Not that I spoke to her.
Not that anything happened
worth putting in a grown-up story.
She just went by once
with her hair coming loose
and one hand brushing it back
and her laugh already turned away
before I could hear the end of it.
That was enough.
Then for an hour
I forgot how arms work,
how standing works,
how a person who has had a body
all his life
can suddenly seem misplaced in it.
If I rhyme this
it will sound foolish.
If I do not
it still will.
She never knew.
That makes it cleaner, maybe.
Still, all week
I kept hearing wheels on wood
and seeing that half-second
like something dropped in me
that kept rolling.