Mostly
The Brits say “maths.” A plural subject feels
right. How I hated geometry’s smugness. What
point in proving what was already true?
Maths everywhere: Bare trees multiplying
twigs toward heaven. Cool white geometry
of intake desks and lounge furniture. Uneven
arcs of apples and more regular display of
sanitizer dispensers.
Even a road connects one point to another via
a (mostly) straight line.
When my father brought home our first
computer, I began working my mind into the
humming complicity of digits.
The monitor at my son’s bedside is replete
with maths – graph lines and numbers and
data. I appreciate the color-coding.
Reading about the lives of mathematicians, I
realize that numbers barely stay in place, an
unsteady line of preschoolers holding a rope,
following a teacher as they cross a street.
Jeneva Stone (she/her) is a poet, essayist and advocate. She’s the author of Monster (Phoenicia Publishing, 2016), a mixed-genre meditation on caregiving, disability & medicine. Her work has appeared in NER, APR, Waxwing, Split This Rock, Scoundrel Time, Pleiades, and many others. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Millay Arts, and VCCA. Her opinion writing has been featured in The Washington Post and CNN Digital. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program.