Even when Norm is sleeping on the couch without motion
his soul recognizes vast motions elsewhere
as the couch and the house it rests on and the ground it's dug into move around
the earth's central axis, which itself moves around the sun, which itself moves
around in a galaxy
that's dancing around with so many others in the vast ballroom of the universe
the way the electrons run around the center of every atom of every molecule that
are somehow dancing around the center of Norm's soul.
There's no exact scale for distance.
"Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear"
they could also be further away
but maybe it's something in the journey that evaporates
or maybe it's the first night of decent sleep
or maybe it's stray thoughts from the gentle
ticking of action potentials in the wet clockwork of the brain.

Russ Bickerstaff is a performance poet/spoken word artist currently living in Milwauke, Wisconsin. He has a BA in psychology with a focus on cognitive neuroscience. There are exactly 30 teeth in his head. His longest sustained conversation lasted for eight hours. He has been mildly confused for 6 years.