In that kidding tone of yours, you told
me it all began

when the smooth soles of your dress shoes             
skidded on the rain-soaked grass.

Your body splayed on the ground,
displayed on the ground.

Your new suit so unsuitable
on the diagonal plane.

How you tried to recover yourself
by covering yourself

with small dismissive gestures,
like the cat,

licking herself, slicking herself,
after a clumsy fall.

You compared your anarchist limbs
to the antichrist limbs

of the medieval damned, in those
paintings where they’re

tumbling from God’s grace: arms
flung over their heads,

bodies like flaccid Xs, exiting
the upright world.

You kept searching the neighbors’
windows to find your reflection

in some sympathetic eye, any I,
because like all of us

you needed to be beheld, to be
held, so the falling would stop.