Concentric Circles, 2026

I used to live in a geometry of accidents,

ovals without orbit,

rectangles arguing with triangles,

a compass spinning drunk in the fist of my ribcage,

no fixed North,

no merciful middle,

just a misaligned center point,

blinking red,

like a broken exit sign in a rented hallway of mirrors.

I called it freedom,

that sprawl of shapes,

that cracked foundation giving way to added weight,

that carnival of almosts,

but it was drift, sister,

it was drift,

a life laid out like spilled hardware on concrete:

bolts, screws, hinges without doors.

I loved without measure,

which is to say I loved without boundary,

which is to say I poured myself into cups with holes in the bottom,

and called the puddle devotion.

I said yes when my bones said no.

I gave until my spine hummed like power lines in June.

I mistook self-erasure for generosity,

mistook chaos for charisma,

mistook attention for affection,

and I stood in the middle of my own life,

like a foreman who had lost the blueprint.

Then,

no lightning bolt, no desert prophet,

just a quiet click in the sternum.

The realization that the center was not outside of me.

Not in applause,

not in lovers who preferred my labor to my laughter,

not in rooms where I bent myself into shapes that fit their comfort.

The center was a decision.

A moral “right” not delivered by thunder

but assembled like scaffolding:

respect laid beam over beam,

self-regard tightened with deliberate screws,

a refusal to betray my own pulse.

I began honing,

like a blade dragged slow across stone,

asking:

What do I love that loves me back?

What work makes my lungs widen?

What fire warms instead of burns?

And there,

in the discipline of listening to myself,

a point formed.

Small.

Unremarkable to the untrained eye.

But fixed.

And from that point,

O miracle of geometry,

circles.

Not frantic spirals,

not desperate loops,

concentric,

deliberate,

widening.

Like a solar system assembling itself around a star that had finally agreed to burn.

Friends stepped into orbit,

not clinging, not draining,

but revolving in rhythm.

And they brought their friends,

and those friends brought ideas,

and ideas brought friction,

and friction sparked dialogue,

and suddenly community was not a word in a grant proposal,

but a living constellation,

voices overlapping in the gallery air,

laughter ricocheting off white walls,

arguments about meaning that ended in handshakes and beer and wine.

The foundation poured not just in concrete,

but in conversation,

a sculpture altering someone’s trajectory,

a photograph cracking open a memory,

a young artist seeing possibility where there had only been rent.

Lives tilting,

not dramatically,

but one degree at a time.

Circles widening.

And somewhere in the widening,

a love.

Not the old hunger love.

Not the “prove-yourself” love.

Not the caretaker’s quiet walk towards the National Razor.

But a love that met me at the center,

that could not have recognized me,

when I was an oval rolling downhill.

Because I was not then,

capable of standing still long enough,

to be chosen for who I was.

Alignment made visibility.

Visibility made recognition.

Recognition made possibility.

And so the circles continue,

me at the center, not as tyrant,

not as sun demanding worship,

but as a steady gravitational yes.

Respect as radius.

Passion as orbit.

Community as proof of motion.

The old shapes still visit sometimes,

crooked hexagons of doubt,

parallelograms of fear,

but they no longer run the blueprint.

The center holds.

And from it: rings of meaning,

rings of friendship,

rings of work that matter,

rings of love that does not require disappearance,

expanding,

expanding,

expanding,

until the once-misaligned life

resembles a galaxy

built not from accident

but from intention.