During the first break in the tests, you cried;

frustration twisted your face tight as pain.

Tears could not blur fright from your seeking eyes

as you pled, silently, for solace which

I tried to exude by words, touch, even

by pure will.  “There’s no right or wrong answers,”

I smiled, “the test will help to understand

why you forget….”

                              and look at me without

                              comprehension as if I were a stain

                              or quadratic equation on a board,

                              and obsessively relive your childhood,

                              and stumbling, you fall against the world.

You are the locus, the center of spin…

 your affliction makes you so….I know that

but try to think this way, it’s more soothing:

take a line….horizontal is calming….

and on that line, you are a data point,

a point enclosed and held in the safety

of a cluster of points, immersed and bathed

in a like community, and not left

sitting alone, an outlier astray;

a unique Me trembling in white space.