numbers to numbers to darling faces—

the union of i and μ.

as if a term could rouse its whisper

and whittle a heart to binary.

I know you’re not a button, hun

because pushing won’t bring you back to life.

let me evaluate your function: 

f(x) = a soul meant to die at 15, surrounded by no-one,

where x is our laughter

and believe me, babe, it’s undefined

a gun isn't a gun until you ferment it

and chug the trigger to a gag.

it's all math. just numbers.

but we ain't hyperbolic

on Monday, I foiled the pews as they

sectored your body

padded with caramel puddy,

transforming my ziskeit to a system of vectors.

I did my homework at the funeral.

crisp, creased paper curled in your palm

an algebraic water lily damp with tearing deluge

drew my mind from discordant addendum

back to your factors:

(x - drinking)(x + me)

if you showed me how you worked,

maybe I could’ve solved you.

if I didn't yell,

maybe you wouldn't’ve done it.

I'm the variable.

logically, a face can't be ubiquitous.

it can't reflect on every plane

every intercept of redwood abutting soil

those barking titans you adored 

almost as much as me. until you didn't.

I don’t see your eyes in exponents

a beautiful brain in a bell curve

what happens when you divide death by 0.

it just don't compute.

you were my only constant—

now, you're desargue’s worst fears

baked into an infinite casket

where our parallel lines converge.

you're unprovable. I'm left in two dimensions.

show me what it all means, duckie:

(imaginary martyrdom + empty bottles) over (hopeless hope)

outputs a tsebrokhn quotient

that fills notebook after notebook,

thrown against memory-spattered stucco walls

last month, your coefficients coincided

and I’m left to compose an impossible inverse.

this month, I burned our problems.

their cinders ascended like noether, descartes,

mirzakhani, euler, kovalevskaya, ramanujan,

every nerdlet that tried to make sense 

of a senseless world.

it was beautiful 

and I still saw rasters in your face.

the angles aflame.

next month, I try to measure your circumference

and find there's less and more of you left 

than before. you're quantitative.

I eat under your redwoods and 

see a forest waltz between faeries and phantoms.

I dance a little. a lot.

in a copse of fading echoes, 

you eclipse digits,

and like a waning gibbous,

your face is blurring.

numbers are static.

things aren't meant to last.

faces to faces to darling numbers and back.