Grandma once said the ocean's edge is God's scissorwork—
but I found a shell today,
its spiral a staircase for ghosts.
Each groove repeats the same story,
smaller,
until the plot dissolves into salt.

I tried to count the ridges, but my finger
always slips. The maps says this beach
is 3.7 miles long. Lies.
Every waves redraws it.

(Somewhere, a tide pools in the whorl of my ear.
I am measuring distances that refuse to converge.)

When I was seven, my brother swore
he counted every star. I didn't believe him.

Now, I work the night shift at this hotel
where numbers unpack their suitcases
and never leave.

Room π plays Hungarian jazz.
Room √2 hums a a tone that won't resolve.

I knock on doors just to hear the hollow
of forever.
My keycard flickers.
The elevator light is broken.

There once were two tracks on a train
Who longed to converge, but in vain!
Old Euclid declared, "It's profane!
For lines that are parallel must stay..."
Though they whisper at infinity: "sweet pain!"

Cicada scribble
their prime-numbered years into bark
the forest counts in threes.

Hexagons repeat.
Hexagons repeat.
Grout hymn in the cracks
where grout hymn in the cracks.

Edges must meet edges.
Edges must meet edges.
The moon's grid fractures
the moon's grid fractures

Hexagons repeat.
Hexagons repeat.

Pinecone.
Tightens.
Scales lock
a continuous psalm...
twenty-one clockwise, thirty-four counter.
Each chamber hums the arithmetic of almost summer.

Spring.
Splits.
Green geometry
unfurls in spirals—
golden angles, sunlit fractions.
Seeds scatter their quiet prime-numbered tantrums.

Autumn.
Falls.
Brittle cipher
chants unsolved equations.
Next year's cone already counting
the infinite recursion of frost and fingers.

The road stitches a line
that almost touches the desert's bend
but never holds.

My headlights trace a brief path
of where I've been
pale landmarks dissolving
in the rearview.

Signs chant endless miles to Albuquerque.
The engine's rythem dims
to a lullaby.

Somewhere, the horizon unravels all boundaries
I press the gas

Our arguments cycle like group axioms, jam knife inverse to your buttered arc.
Closure is the grit of we keep trying.

While you split almonds, I twin forks
still mapping structure but never truth.
Your silence partitions rooms into cosets.

Morning factors us to primes.
But Somewhere between associative and never quite
I live in your kernel

The Axiom of shoelaces gave birth to Tuesday and said,
"Let it be a rhombus."
Axiom the green, iron smell of 7:30 AM.
Axiom my kneecaps into a proof that rain invented Legos which invented guilt which invented the pain in my foot.

Axiom sprouts from my toaster.
AxiomAxiom the way clocks vomit
prime numbers. I Axiom my neighbor's dog
until it becomes a Axiom of un-dog.

Axiom the stapler's third eye.
Axiom the AxiomAxiom
of kettles singing opera.
Oh? Axiom the Axiom of Axiom?
I think the taxis just converged into one Axiom
made of Axiom and also not.

Axiom the Axiom that un-Axioms sweaters
back into screaming Axioms. AxAxiom
of my left Axiom becoming the Axiom
of your childhood Axiom's parrot.

( Axiom now a gerbil piloting a
🟦 Axiom-s̴̫͝h̴̡̚a̴̡͗p̴̳̕e̶̟͂d̵̬̽ ̷͈̅�̸͚̐�̴̭͑ through
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                                                                                                 🐝 Ạ̵̢͔̭̰͍̋̽͆̓̆͝ ̸̜̠̼̙̈̈́X̵͕̣̹̦̉̾͆́̊ ̴̪̠̟͂Í̵̦̣̒̓͑̃ ̴̮̪͔̦̒̊̊͒͜͝͝O̷̤̠͙̔ ̸̯͔̻̰̋̈́ͅḾ̵̛͈͙͌̇̆̔ 🐝 )