MATHEMATICS

 

My scalp prickled with tiny beads of anxiety.
Everyone had left school but me and Mr. Heaney,
who hovered like an unwelcome shadow, occasionally
rising from the fortress of his desk,
hands clasped behind his back,
gray New Balance sneakers
all but silent in their slow, deliberate steps.
The blackboard had been wiped clean of equations,
dark and certain as the night sky,
with only
a few ghostly wisps of that other world showing through.
I was trying and failing, trying and failing to master
long division and algebra, the worksheet paper
worn nearly to nothing from my endless revisions.
The universe, he liked to remind us, is made of numbers.
You must know this if you are to know anything.
I did not doubt this, though it was a language
the Creator had clearly chosen to keep from me.
I labored on as the afternoon light gradually shifted,
the blank face of the clock counting out its lengthening
seconds, each with a small sense of finality.
I could imagine the invisible threads connecting
all things, like the elaborate webs of spiders,
glistening, though I gave them neither name nor meaning.
I could hear the voices of what sounded like summer
outside the window, voices rising and falling,
could almost make out the words that elicited their sudden laughter, though it all seemed, in those
strictly measured moments, to be light years away.

WHY I LIVE IN A COLD CLIMATE

 

Because the sound of ice cracking beneath my feet reminds me of wooden ships creaking as they awaken for a journey. Because that journey can be long and arduous. Because frost collecting in the corners of darkened window glass becomes a kind of map, more reliable than starlight alone. Because I always liked you in a hat, and our bodies draw sudden sparks beneath the drab woolen blankets. Because our breath here can be seen as easily as any cloud passing, our silence sent skyward along with our prayers. Because in winter we walk easily upon water, never questioning the river's current or where we might have left the shore. Because you can follow the tracks of those who have trudged through the snow before you, making a path for others yet to come. Because sound travels far in the cold, and we have learned to listen. Because the Cardinals and house finches remind us to sing, in spite of it all. Because there are as many names and varieties of snow as there are for their Creator. Because whenever you drop a glove here, a stranger will inevitably call out, saving you yet again, and your saying thank you is really an offering of love you cannot quite admit to. But you feel the warmth of that fabric once again encircling your fingers, small but undeniable, feel the pinprick ache of blood's knowing return, and that may be enough for now.