Here's to the ordinary numbers that start with 1

That can add sensibly to all or any

Or even the other ones listed as some

Other cardinals ordinary—

It's just natural.

Here's to whole numbers that can be divided

Simply by presenting a divisor

And fractions averted by decimal point invited

Along the way, none the wiser—

It's just rational.

Here's to numbers living consecutively

Each pair, between them, a world abstract

Of yet more numbers positively or negatively

Here's to the figures from which you can subtract—

Without the fear of crossing zero.

Merely reversing the signs keeps all reason intact

On matching two-dimensional reciprocal vectors

With a mirror at its center to count them exact

And multiples via multiplication are product effectors—

It's an inventory with which you can deal, so.

Functions are dysfunctional

Logarithms arrhythmic

Clockfaces are much too punctual

Fibonacci cataclysmic—

And a fool's golden triangle.

Quadratics are initially subversive

Calculus finds time-zero

Fractals are visually recursive

Built upon fine echos—

A nonplussed matrix tangle.

Forget complex numbers

That use mathematical imagination

And the imaginary numbers that only encumber

As unreasonable, unreal, and unfounded improvisations—

And too conveniently additive.

They disguise themselves as multiplicands

With sly operations parenthesized asunder

Or multipliers where one of them understands

Square roots of a negative number—

Are you positive?

Fie on irrational numbers that can never measure up

In ratios of integers devised to be adaptable

But are too irrational if on a measuring cup

When you're trying to pour something measurably practical—

It's inversely irreversibly perverse.

Prefer instead the ordinary

Where divisors separate dividends

Tidily if not cardinary

Engendering the quotient one intends—

And commutatively do the reverse.

As my example I present the quotient of 3

When 12 mounts the 4 in numerated denomination

And puts two figures in the position to be

Happily ever after in fractional copulation—

In a numbered consortium.

We'd be lost at the corner, 41st and 2nd

If the only cardinals stood purply in Rome

And coordinates not geographically reckoned

When hurdling to nowhere like home—

Ordinary cardinals—you can count on them.

There are no irrational countdowns to blast-off

Nor complex fingers to count on

Imaginary calendar pages to tear off

Or occult ratios-and-disproportions—

Making inconsistent persistent.

But equating 4 x 2 to become a 2-by-4

As the Max size measure of Planck that defines

What hits you in the head in ordered pairs or more

When you stray off the ordinary number lines—

And that's a Constant.

The red bird was her favorite. Reminded her of old songs from her youth. The blue was the wiser. Never preened for anyone but her. The morning her old man stayed gone, she went ahead and fixed the glass. From his time gone, four days followed with what could be, had the heavens heard her wish. When the detectives came in to tell her the news, she had two words for them: You sure? They glanced at each other, and one of them asked her to come down with them to identify the body, to sit for questioning. She looked at the birds. A tear broke loose over its edge. Once and big. Long crawl down. Inside the tear, the years of it, over. She breathed and looked skyward. Swollen heart. The joy in her. The detectives stared at each other. After she had viewed the corpse, grey room, two-way glass. Never a suspect, but her relief at the news caused intrigue in the lead detective he had not felt in years. Heartbeat aside, he needed a recorded statement. He set the coffee in front of her. Before he hit record he had squeezed her hand.

“Just protocol, sweetheart.”

The apartment between them, empty. His on the end of the hall. Hers two down on the left. The Sun gone from the city, the last moments of light, gold. A knock. Nobody knocked on their floor. Out of bed, the dream pulled back, a café blurred. Feet to floor. Eye through the doorway. Two men in suits, talking to Aria. Her door open. Her body unseen. The men were sharpened. Linear men. He listened there nude. The detectives, there by word of the bartender. The body was discovered a week after death, they canvassed. Easy work led them to Aria. Her voice from her place. The sound. Satin over chalk. The music. She had nothing for them. She had neither felt him walking behind her nor heard a sound. Blade broken off in his head, teeth kicked out. In that order. They waited for body language. Aria, stared through them. She asked them how the landlord was holding up, and nothing more. They left, locked out. A beat of three on down, and the shower turned on.

At the counter, she watched them leave the lift. Across the lobby. The lead told her they were still working the case, but after this much time, absence of outside prints, and the fact nobody in the area knew anything, to have no expected miracles. She smiled at him. This one was plenty. Done with the floor upstairs. The face and body behind the door up there. The ink behind her robe. The hardness of the widow facing him. He gave her a smile, loose. He left with his partner. Night in the city had swallowed day and any trace of the case.

The city kept him busy for its own reasons.

The old man was prepared for nothing, and he remained that way. What he wanted from the city was easy, a blank space from which to breathe. On his bed in the dirt, when the city called to him it was nature now. Servitude, hungry. Involuntary. Never enough love from the skyline, from the base of his fathers looking down on him. When the night covered the city, the old man could even see the tops of the buildings bent down, slight, glass eyes watching his blood.

—Four nights back, a long thought up into the stars, he had been pulled to his feet. A degenerate moved west down the boulevard to pluck their flower. The old man in dirt, he was a fix for the city. Nothing he would do more. Where the silhouette of the stranger would walk east, across the street moved the beauty of the city, a song of life everyone heard but her. A mass of silhouette following. The old man reached down his side and gripped the handle. When he moved, he moved to hunt. The warm voices in his head, what was needed, and what he would give. Unlimited love:

Leave the blade inside, son. Take his teeth for fun.

The kill was not the first, the last, or the slowest. He had done worse to others when the city called him out.

At the counter. The landlady sat, younger. A reverse lift of burden, Schopenhauer. Her old man, dead, the city out there in her consideration. Her birds in tune with her. Well-slept, bellies full. Songs of the streets, audible now. She had tried to feel for him, to feel the loss, any type of semblance to sorrow. It fell dead upon conjure. The wish for him to feel long pain, fear until his end, was the only stone in her faded. Her fridge bulging with health. Skin on the mend. Lotion on her face, lemons to her elbows. Unlimited moonrise, a kind Sun. The faces crossing the lobby almost beautifully. The fridge became full on the afternoon of the letter from the holdings company. A condolence, and praise for her work. She was full management now. All checks would be paid to her name. It arrived with one, made out with an extra month in full. Hers. Signed with a stamp. She sent the post office box a card. A message of grace, of gratitude. She dipped her wedge in honey, sucked it off the end. A slow bite into the meat of the fruit. Life had not been as bright as this dark truth. Age set aside, she could breathe and live like the others did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4r9OztHPs4

Dying, for me, was a beautiful experience.

I know that sounds crazy, blasphemous even, to describe such a tragic thing, a viscerally sad thing, in such a dissonant way. You might wonder if I was depressed. And truly, I wasn’t. In the end, despite everything, I was stupidly happy. Still, if I was being completely and truly honest, dying, the actual act of it, not the pain or the ragged breathing, no, the actual process of letting go… that part. That part was bliss.

Let me tell you about my life, before I ask you to celebrate in its ending.

It wasn’t a particularly spectacular existence, some might even call it boring, run of the mill. A life that could be mistaken for a thousand others. Of course, to me, at the time, it was everything, the only thing.

I was born in a small Midwestern town, raised in typical Midwestern niceness, by a father who was strict and distant but did his best, and a mother who was a tad too religious but who did all the mothering things with unmatched fervor. I was clothed in clean clothes, my feet adorned with shoes that were sensible and fit well. I was loved and scolded and hugged in all the typical ways. I had two sisters I constantly squabbled with, banging on the shared bathroom door, hastily getting ready for the day in a panic, somebody always holding up the one hairdryer, using up all the hot water.

I loved, oh yes, I loved. Roman, that was his name. I remember thinking his name had that unique way of rolling easily in the curl of my tongue, passing effortlessly through my lips, like I’ve said his name all my life, or that I’m meant to, for the rest of it.

He was brilliant, my Roman. I met him at university, studying astrophysics. He had grand ideas and even grander dreams. He loved life but at the same time was disillusioned by it. He said to me once, using his hands to gesture into space: “It’s not possible, you know, that this is it. There’s more to this, more to everything, we just can’t see it.”

You would think it would hurt, the way he said it, the way he longed for something more than us, more than what I could give him, but it didn’t. Because I knew what he meant, I felt it too.

There was something in between the empty spaces, he told me, between the tiniest of particles. An answer to everything.

I never found out what he meant, neither did he. He died shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, before he was able to finish his research, before he got to meet his daughter, at that point still the tiniest clump of molecules gestating inside me.

I remember the pain of that moment. How the world became dull and gray. How I went to sleep too many nights hoping to never wake up again. But day after day I woke up, and I would go through the motions, and I would go to work and my prenatal appointments, smiling at my doctor, telling him yes, yes, I’m doing okay. It’s hard, but I’ve got my sisters, you know, and my mom…

Then I had my daughter, and at once the world had color again. She had Roman’s eyes, almond shaped and deeply brown, thick dark lashes swooping downwards at the sides. I swear she looked at me in the exact way Roman did, with that exact slight raise of the brows, the slight curl in the lips, and I remember weeping.

I named her: Aster. Star. The only one that mattered in my universe, my sun.

We had a simple life, our little family of two. We fought a lot, in the way all mothers and daughters do, Aster having the quick wit of her father, the stubbornness of her mother. She broke my heart a million times when she was a teenager, which we mended as we both grew older. Then as quickly as she came into my life, she left. I understood. She had to build a life of her own, having met her own star, her own universe.

And it was good.

“Mom?”

She’s finally here. My star. “Aster.”

Large dark eyes stared down at me. She was older now, my star, smile lines having formed at the corners of her eyes. Have those always been there? They must have. Aster always smiled with her eyes.

“Hey mom, it’s okay. We’re here.”

We. I couldn’t see well these days. She must have brought her little boy, my grandson. I squinted at the small blonde head on her lap. She named him… Roman.

I wanted so much to smile, but it hurt to even breathe. My chest muscles struggled to expand. I saw the nurse put a hand on my daughter’s shoulder, shaking her head.

Yes, there was pain, every single muscle hurt, the air caught uncomfortably in my chest, but there was also something else… something light. Suddenly I felt weightless. I knew then it was time to go.

Time at once contracted then expanded, and I could see everything, the future, the past, all possible choices and universes all at once. I finally saw it, what my Roman was talking about, the space in between the tiniest particles, the invisible energy that connects all of us together, in every universe, in every possible dimension. My universe, my stars.

I died then.

And it was beautiful.

I threw my body to the ground and wept.

This isn't me. This isn't me. THIS ISN'T ME!

I tried to convince myself, but it was futile.

Maybe some other day this wasn't me. Maybe some other day I was that fearless viking warrior queen: tall and proud and lacking even the ability to shed a tear. Maybe some other day I was a woman who evoked feelings of fear in others-- a woman who men shrank away from when she stood at her full height-- whose shoulders were set wide-- whose eyes squinted in permanent cat-like glare, angry at the world and anyone who might dare to tell her no. Maybe some other day. Maybe every other day. But not today.

Today I was small. Today I wanted to curl into the caverns of my heart like a snail retreating into its shell. Today I would bargain with God almighty. Today I was broken.

Broken by three words:

Multi. Organ. Failure.

God. Please. God PLEASE. Please. I know, God. We don't bargain. I know.

But God, please. Please don't take her from me.

Please.

Please don't let her die.

I will do anything.

I was afraid. Horrifically afraid.

I wanted to throw up and then hurl myself out the 3rd story window.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to melt into nothingness.

I wanted to drown my tears in the folds of her Minnie mouse nightgown and never emerge again.

But I didn't.

I hid in the bathroom for all of five minutes, threw myself to the ground, silently wept, bargained her life for mine, and then wiped the snot off my face and pasted on a smile.

I climbed into the hospital bed next to her, held her, stroked her flaccid hair.

I whispered in her ear. I begged her to wake up. I promised she could have that kitten she'd been wanting. I promised we'd make those necklaces she'd asked for. I promised the extra story before bed, and the extra kiss, and the one more drink of water. I promised her four candles on her birthday cake this summer.

I promised to never forget again.

I would never forget again the value of her life to me.

I held her all night, flinching at every monitor beep, praying, pleading, forsaking every physical and mental need. When the sun was slicing through the curtains, I got out of the bed and stood.

Enough. God. I have had enough.

Pass this cup from me.

Use me.

Heal her.

I laid my hands on her small body. They nearly covered her completely. My hands are large and she was so, so small.. barely three years old.

I felt power coursing in my veins. The exhaustion of the last two weeks fell away as the shafts of sunlight burned into the small room, enveloping us both in blinding light.

Oh Lord, my God.

You who are able.

Let not my will, but your will be done.

It felt as though my hands were afire, and the moment stretched into eternity. A peace that passes understanding flooded my spirit.

And when I opened my eyes...

She was smiling up at me.

The hardest thing about life is remembering all of the things that were better before...

After each wash and dry cycle,

that once soft blanket begins to clump into small sticky broken fibers.

Chocolate ice cream no longer tastes like childhood innocence,

but rather a heartbreak remedy for sad rainy days.

Your favorite pair of shiny shoes that your mom bought you for school,

is packed tightly in a blue bin labeled "Haley 2009".

The tree house that seemed like a palace full of potential when you were younger,

now sits as a tiny shack with spiderwebs and lost memories.

...And so with each passing day we are forced to remember things that were better before. Better before time transformed them into something unrecognizable. And better before you grew too old to realize that these things of youthful innocence have become nothing but a pastime.

“How did you know I write? It’s not something I‘ve shared.”

”It’s pretty obvious from your profile. Besides, anyone who speaks so deliberately, so articulately; who uses the vocabulary you use… that person must feel a need to write those words down for posterity, mustn’t they?” As she spoke a long, elegantly painted finger twisted itself around a hanging tendril of hair, whilst the faintest whisper of a smile haunted her otherwise stoid expression. “I simply adore a writer,” she cooed.

Stoid, that is, but for her eyes.

I sensed that we had reached a fulcrum in our conversation. That the beginnings of a salacious relationship teetered upon my reply. But was that what I really wanted from this woman I had just met? Sex? And all of the heavy lifting required afterwards?

She was obviously smart, and playfully beautiful, but mostly I was drawn into those famished eyes of hers which gazed hawkishly back into my own, and to that instinctive caution I felt; that at any moment she might slide over until she was close enough to take a bite from that tender muscle just above my collarbone, her lips and tongue massaging away the pain her teeth would inevitably cause to the fabric of my being.

Of course that is what I wanted, sex. It was why I was here, wasn’t it? But I was a middle-aged, long off the market man feeling his was through this strange, new, matriarchal world, so I selected my words carefully.

“I would hardly call myself a writer.” I spoke slowly, my thoughts tempered by both humility and caution. “What I do,“ I ventured, “is to post stories for other aspiring writers to read on a website in hopes of a few ‘likes’, a couple of reposts, and maybe, if I’m lucky, a generous comment or three? It is nothing glamorous.”

The pointed toe of a heeled pump found my boot under the table, resting itself against my foot, whether accident or signal who could say? But the toe stayed there, not pulling away. “So tell me, Huckleberry. What is it you write on this website that other aspiring writers ‘like’, and repost, and comment on?”

My posture literally sagged as my confidence waned. “Well, I’m partial to happy endings.”

The toe moved away from my boot. “So, you write… fairy tales?”

”Well, not exactly. But fiction.”

”Ewww! I abhor fiction.“ She picked up her expensive cocktail, downing it in a swallow, as I had only until recently hoped she might do to me. “Sorry, but I have to go let my dog out.”

”I understand.” It was disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

”… and to think I was about to let your dog out.” Her nose curled up as she said it as from an unpleasant odor, and she made short, quick strides towards the door, leaving nothing but a shadowy wisp of shea butter on the air to remember her by.

Quicker than I could raise a finger for the waitress to bring the check a mousy brunette slipped herself into my date’s still-warm seat, an ice cold beer in either of her hands. She slid one of the across the table towards me. “I heard it all. Believe me, she wasn’t your type anyways. I, on the other hand, love a happy ending.”

Thankfully for this amateurish writer the night was still young, and another chapter that might be liked, reposted and commented upon waited to be written.

So Lieutenant Carver and his former partner drink cans of beer in the police station parking lot. It’s the final season of The Wire, so we’ve seen the officers make mistakes. A recent one ruined a young boy’s life—his foster mom gets third degree burns after a Molotov cocktail attack, and he ends up getting brutalized in a group home. That knowledge haunts Carver. He was a bit of a knucklehead in his early days, but he’s since grown to be a competent cop and a good man who really tried to help that poor kid. “We thought none of it mattered,” Carver says, “but it did.”

He crumples up this cheap beer can. He can’t let go of all the fuckups he must have made when he was young and stupid, and he can’t let go of the fuckup with the kid, and he can’t shake off the fuckups he has yet to make even when he tries to do right, so he just crumples up this can and hurls it onto the station’s roof, where there’s already a pile of a thousand other empties other cops have thrown.

I try to write the beer can.

I think I’ll have the blackened salmon.

The key enters the lock

Echoing a familiar scrape and thunk

Softly jingling returning to the hook

One shoe, the other, returned to the cubby

Soft steps until the unavoidable squeak on the fourth step

Despite the ads, weight on the mattress is noticeable

A cold body comes close to steal body heat

Wrapping around me

Waking me

Realizing

Your ghost still has cold toes

Tear stained pillows offer

No comfort no matter how soft

Do you remember when we used to sleep on the trampoline?

When we'd fall over laughing, bruising ourselves on the gravel of our driveways

Sideways, crashing down

I can hardly remember those days anymore

I only remember the soreness of my limbs and tree bark against my skin while I climbed

The path we carved in the woods to a place we considered sacred and holy

The pain we explained to each other in a tiny room without light

The flowers we exchanged in hopeful dreams of retaliation

The tears in your eyes when you said you were leaving

The breath we shared for three seconds

The time it took to get up

The space between us

The sadness

The pain.

I don't know about you

But I can hardly remember those days anymore