I did not know his name, but I saw in him
Something I detested.
I saw his contours and his edges,
Rises and falls, and knew:
I would fit perfectly against him.
The squares of his shirt would unfold
And wrap around my triangles.
My corners would fit deep inside his crevices,
And his sine curve would get hopelessly tangled
In my cosine.
Nestling in his geometry, the friction
Would be unbearable.
The heat would grow,
No negative space between to let it out.
We would burn up.
Ducking behind the bar,
I tried to avoid eye contact,
Knowing if our eyes were allowed
To push, to prod into each other –
If our gazes were permitted
To crash and intertwine,
Graphs becoming illegible –
There would be no red wire
Or blue wire
To sever with panic.
There would be no furrows
Or unraveling of theories,
No maps or scale models.
The police line would be crossed.
Houston would have a problem.
If we even saw into each other
For a mortar-and-pestle moment.
Still, I could not help
One last glance.
To try and hear the reprimand of his watch,
Tsking away his life, his world,
Hypothetical thousands of miles from mine.
My eyes traced the risk of his jaw,
(Such a curve could not be found in nature)
Trying to find the derivative, the limit,
But none could be found.
In my wonder, I forgot myself,
And he looked up.
Stars did not implode.
The oceans did not churn.
The hills did not sing.
But I could hear, in
The indigo suede of his shoes,
The dive of his glasses,
The imbalance of the squares on his shirt,
And the slight delay in the turn of his cheek
As his gaze tripped over me,
That he understood;
That he would be the one to peel himself up
And see me;
That we would be the ones
To force a roar
From Mother Nature’s jaded lips;
That we would prove Fermat’s last theorem;
That we were doomed.
