I have never been one for video games.
Oh, I liked sitting at the two-sided
Ms. PacMan console table
at Wildflour Pizza in 1985
with my dad or sister
but I was just guessing,
punching buttons at random.

I think it’s because I can’t see
their inner workings, like algebra
(the devil’s code, which
I chose to ignore until
it went away in college).

I was smitten with geometry-
I could see what we were measuring,
it involved gathering proof,
making an argument,
one of my favorite activities.

I suspect neurotypical brains
run like a skeeball machine-
the goal clear and linear,
you hit your target or fall short
but you knew exactly where
you were aiming the ball,
just a matter of practicing form,
holding steady, applying
the correct amount of force.

My brain is more of a Plinko situation,
its course unpredictable, even to me,
falling in a series of ricochets
toward an unknown destination
once gravity inevitably wins.

On hyperfocused days
(by which I mean nights)
my brain is a Rube Goldberg machine,
taking a creative and time-consuming path
to achieve what I’m sure looks,
to an outside observer, like a simple task.

I mean to push the button on the coffeemaker
with my finger, but somehow I
drop a shoe
onto a switch
that activates a fan
that blows down a string of dominos
that inflates a rubber dish glove
that pushes it for me
and in that moment I realize
I forgot to add the water
and also the grounds.