Zebra Seeking Spoons

In lecture halls they teach it plain:

Common things are common.

Horses thunder down the lanes of diagnosis—

the steady gallop of strep,

the predictable canter of flu,

the sure-footed trot of a sprain.

But sometimes,

in the sterile hush of exam rooms,

a softer sound lingers—

an uneven rhythm,

a hoof that doesn’t quite match the herd.

Zebras slip through the cracks of certainty,

striped bodies hidden in a blur of dust,

rare, elusive,

yet standing there all along.

To listen for them

requires unlearning the comfort of the obvious,

to admit that the unusual is still possible,

that rarity does not mean invisibility.

Because for some of us,

the hoofbeats have always belonged

to zebras.