There is geometry in the humming of the strings,
there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
– Pythagoras


When I think about what day it is
Dates blur, if I look
further, past
05.03
twenty
twenty
a bunch of O’s and dots
and digits, stuck together, unwieldy

If only I could feel their insignificance
with you, nudge them towards
the bed, moonlit
where we can spend
our time, studying the way

Bodies tangle in
white sheets, cold feet and
all the heat rising to our chests
that rest in parallel,
while lips draw lines and circles
across our pale paper skin,
postulating on whether or not
‘all right angles
are congruent’,
sharp elbows overlaid
and legs wrapped tightly
around each other,
in golden spirals.

Who knew Euclidean geometry
could be so intimate.

And he said that he knows for a fact:
Girls with freckles are happier.

And I told him I’ve heard
That one before,
But he said that he made it up on the spot,
In the bed we’ve made, our sheets less **** –
Creased and dimpled by our weighing bodies –  

When I nagged on him to tell me what he loves
About me on the inside,
Where we’re taught what counts,
Where you’re not allowed to ask,
Where sometimes it’s just too good not to.

On the inside, he listed:
Lungs, liver, ovaries perhaps –
The parts that everyone has,
The parts that can be left unspoken.
And I told him he’s a smart-***.

But on the outside, he touched my cheeks,
I love your freckles because they prove
You’ve lived
Felt the sun on your skin – it’s sunlight sprinkles, after all
Laughed so hard, as they are uneven and all around
That way maybe, every time, your laugh
Scattered them all.

Thoughts begin to racquetball,
of Ginsberg’s peaches and Whitman’s lilacs
in a field of green and Diane Di Prima,
just Diane Di Prima, in her translucent garb,
completely exposed
as vulnerable as can be, breaking a heart
in every line

Then they bounce off to other places,
like the milk you forgot to buy,
or the mildewed laundry you’ll have to hang
on the flank-y drying rack
in the afternoon moon,
or that long-awaited
message
from a friend
taking up space,
while dust bunnies flop around,
left and right, with every hesitant
primordial blow
that you feed them

Then again, back to
Auden’s weighing clocks, ticking away
at something you can’t quite grasp
or would like to, as the signal
returns

There’s nothing like a frosty winter morning,
when the sky has had enough
of trying to look nice and welcoming
for you today,
but instead decided to take the day off
and retreat under the soft grey fluff of a blanket, and you too,
have done the same, in a show of comraderie,
cracking the window open just enough
to feel each other’s breath
across the zipping air
that won’t stop fussing
or biting off the skin on your right thumb.

There’s nothing like such a morning
when a bottomless pit of steaming hot coffee isn’t enough, though your heart-rate
is through the roof, but you pretend that’s good
for you, as if it’s pumping blood and heating up
your insides.

A morning when the requirement to stay inside
is no longer a discomfort but an opportunity –
for some calm piano tunes,
just like the wind
converging then diverging,  
to serenade you in the background, while your rough
cold hands, stretch out in their familiar spider web
but this time in a slower
motion stretch
and take you to the keyboard once again,
because there’s nothing like it on a frosty, freezing, gloomy winter  
Morning like this.