Reunion of Broken Parts

You were never subtracted, really.

You're still a whole 

Number, somewhere,

Just slid further down the equation

By some hop-

Scotch duck

And weave through

Crosses and bars

And a whole chain of other divisions.

And the remainder? Too much

Mad mashing of the buttons

On this calculator. I need a break.
I need a light.

You've covered my eyes and the numbers

Fade on my face until you

Let go. Cones and rods adjust and

The answer's back!

In my excitement, a stray finger. 

Clear memory.

I've lost it. Crunch

The numbers again.

Other fingers pressing,

More erasing and then

The tip of the pencil
Snaps. Seeing the dust on my fingers.
So that's how I lost the lead.

Sharpen. A new year.

Your new house. A parentheses, all walled off,

You and him. A and B. I was the X,

But Y was there, too.

Foiled. Add a few more months but

First: the order of operations. We're paired all wrong.

Outside your house and it's dark but I see you

Inside, all lit up with a new variable. That was

Last year and now I'm left with all these letters
That could mean anything or nothing.

This is basic stuff, algebra, and I'm not getting it.

Just isolate this part. Just solve for why
She's got so many confounding gestures.

Just balance the equation:
Me, looking across the far side of those two bars
At the most gorgeous
Puzzle of symbols.
Unreal, elusive meaning
Smudged by too much erasure
And my fingerprints all over, guilty.
I write "Her Blurred Infinity"
In a margin.
And I give up.


The paper returned.
You didn't show your work.

Lower, still, written in red
And underlined twice:

See me