Within Close Range: Anita

Anita is one of those agile girls 

whose limber and daring I envy.

Her front flips and back flips, 

backbends and full splits.

I can’t even cartwheel.

I do a competent somersault,

but it garners little praise. 

So, I spend a good deal of time 

just laying in the grass.

Observing. 

Awed by long, lanky, bendy bodies –

especially Anita’s – 

twisting, turning, and taking flight. 

Wondering why and how 

she could do such things so skillfully, 

when those skills so skillfully eluded me. 

Or was it the passion to try? 

But Anita’s dexterity 

defies the norms of stretchability 

because Anita adds double-jointed

to her impressive athletic ability.

She often demonstrates her loose-jointed trait

by bending her willowy hand the wrong way; 

masterfully mis-shaping her long, freckled arm, 

as if made of soft, moist, modeling clay. 

She can do the same with her shoulders and knees 

until her bowed silhouette looks strange indeed:

a favorite umbrella blown inside out

by a rib-bending gust in a strong, spring shower.

Illogical and ludicrous.

Almost cartoonish.

Watching her move I feel ever defeated,

disjointed,

dysfunctional. 

A dyed-in-the-wool, tried and failed tumbler.

Forever to watch from the shade of a tree, 

where I marvel at my elastic friend, 

who can bend, 

and bend, 

and bend.