infinity

On the 8th Day

/ Arambler / 2 Comments

She sees herself poised
at the edge
of a pier. It’s not a mystery
how she got here. There
she goes again:

running across weathered boards
trying to catch fireflies.

She pauses
when she gets to the end.
Discovers she’s standing
by herself. The other
firefly catcher turned back

hours ago. Maybe days. Maybe
he turned back
a billion years ago.

His palms could be cupping
a glowing 8 at rest
on a pier
on the other side.

He’s not here. Unless.
She reviews the calm
bay water beyond her sandaled feet.
Unless all sleeping 8’s
spoon together when it cools.

∞

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Each time I pull out a calculator
I feel that disapproving
look outweigh your seductive
glint. It doesn’t add up—nothing

does since I discovered you
were gone to the numbers
bonfire beyond. And you’ve been monitoring
the flame for years. Where was I?

I never let you take me
to the Take No Heroes Hotel.
Now I’ve misplaced the directions
but can still prove

I haven’t lost my way. I remember
something about forgetting limits.
Let my lucky 8
get knocked down tonight.

Generation Logic

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You began the baby
boom—I ended it. JFK shot

your senior year—Lennon
mine. I will read too much

into this symmetry. We look
for patterns in everything,

those of us who have been addicted
to numbers (and such). Chaos

or infinity, we really don’t get to choose.

Self Curate

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If I were a museum,
I would adopt
the ampersand
before at. Swirls 

of entanglement mean
more to me
than a spiraling into
sense of place. 

If I can’t have home,
I’ll take the plural
loci, the many phases
of identity, the journeys 

over arrival, options
over commitment—
the possibility
of leaning into infinity.

Metamorphosis in Two Spheres

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A dime in the street
becomes two touching
a flatness tires can’t roll
away. Infinity sleeps outside 

before summer solstice
in the rain. With morning, it rises 

to become a figure eight
on air—hold the ice.
Keep going, dare
ascendance and serifs. By midday, 

it just might become
this ampersand above
tree canopies flirting
with young gulls and moths.