I’m a Centipede, Baby!

Photo by Richard Stovall on Unsplash.

They say Socrates danced at dawn.
Spun in quiet circles before the sun,
as if tuning himself to some deeper harmony,
a rhythm drawn from before the body—
the breath of the cosmos
spelled in silent choreography.

And maybe I’m dancing too.
But clumsily, spasmodically,
dragging the limbs of a thought
through the syntax of late nights
and half-felt revelations.
I loop Palestrina
like a sacred polyphony in my headphones
until even the harmonies start to taste
like bread consumed,
taken wholly into the self—
as if becoming one.

Now I crawl.
Segment by segment.
Sound by sound.
I’m a centipede,
I'm a centipede, baby.
All verbs and vowels,
all motion and misfires.
A holy creature with too many legs
and no idea which one leads.

Some days I’m just a vowel—
open, trembling, breath-made.
Waiting for a consonant to give me edge,
to shape the blur of my spirit into meaning.
Other days I’m the consonant—
firm, defined,
but missing the music.
Mostly I’m in-between:
not a word,
but a longing for one.

And that’s the thing—
this isn’t about grammar.
It’s about the mystery of connection.
Like in Ion, when Socrates says
we’re links in a chain,
tugged by the divine—
not creators,
but conductors
of a fire greater than possession,
a fire that flows when bodies and minds
are connected—
and sex is better
in threes
among the trees,
because Eros, when real,
isn’t private—
it’s communal,
cosmic,
and yes—
it’s fucking explosive.
O' Radiant Dawn!

Chad at the seminar thinks
Plato is about efficient governance.
He calls The Republic
a blueprint for ethical UX.
Sheena posts reels from her desert van
whispering “Know thyself” into a ring light.
She sells vowel-based essential oils.
She says, “I’m just a vowel, vibing.”
And maybe she is.
Maybe we all are.
But even vowels ache for context.

Me?
I don’t livestream, I listen.
I listen to wisdom—
but not as something I own,
rather, as something greater
moving through me,
like the current of a sentence
pulling me into form.

I listen for the trinity of structure:
noun, verb, virtue—
the good, the true, the motion.
Like a sacred dance
happening inside my spine.

It’s a party, yes—
but not the glitter kind.
This one tears you down
letter by letter
until you remember
you were once a whole.
That the Logos speaks
not just through you—
but as you.

My body becomes punctuation.
My doubts, italicized.
My longing:
a dangling participle
choking softly on its own breath.

The crawl continues.
Another foot.
Trying to catch the sound—
to trace what flows through it,
as if each segment listens forward
for the next note.
Another shape approaching form.
Until the final period
crowns the centipede,
complete.