A Child bored in the back of a classroom A drawing disguised as a math exercise Eyes mesmerized by the curves, lines flirting with infinity A hand, not trusting rulers or their measuring nonsense A hand, failing all but touch itself Did I tell you? Our word for math is labor. Hell with your divide; bodies are present and invisible.

Count
It’s a system, a score, and we dance.

Did she say, here, there, and elsewhere?

Over the years, paper got used to pretending to be a rectangle.

The edges giggle. As if they would ever believe in something as silly as parallels. I bring the far ends together. My fingers run to touch, to bend, to trace, to remember.

I count through forgetting.

The lines are threads I lose and find again.

 It’s a sea you haven’t seen.

In actuality, it’s just a lake that grew too big.

And so one day, it decided to be called a sea.

Sometimes it can be as simple as that.

Sometimes sitting in New York, staring at the Atlantic, I call it an ocean.

How can a story ask you to imagine, to believe into existence, what you will never see?

I no longer trust language.

The paper is coated as if waiting for the sun. Blue: the deeper you go, the more you have known the warmth on your skin.
Distance

There was no verb this time.

Only traces, through and through. It’s memories Of stories In languages You don’t know.

Silence.

It’s an empty page and my hand.