Clocks Divided by Moon Phases is the Square Root of Loss

He smelled like pine needles and Peter
Bondra was his favorite hockey player. He ran marathons
to watch numbers bounce on the backs of others and because
the sound of wind suits comforted his fear of crowds. His
thoughts were racked with Nader and the words he heard on
NPR, made him laugh and cry and feel anxious,
all at the same time. There was doubt there sometimes,

in his voice, it got too loud, blocking out some of my
black holes, but mostly I was hidden by the light in his eyes,
bounced off of a street corner signal or the flashlight
on my keys I shined in them. He was crazy
about his mother's waffles and the way the syrup

flowed in and out of each crevice until the whole
thing was soggy and inedible to anyone else. I gave
him the clock with the numbers that fell off so the hands
pointed to black holes. He told me he couldn't live without
it and I smile, because I knew a book without vowels
would have gotten him further, but the fact that he could

make up time helped me sleep better. He wore the blue and
grey sweater I found for him at the thrift shop near
my hometown. He let me take it off slowly so
I could run my hands over his stomach and tickle
the spot near his equator until he fell over in fits of
laughter that only I could sweep up with my broom

of straw and put the pieces neatly back in place. Once
he decided to take us East to his parent's place and he
told me my anxiety about it was cute. I told him I would
throw up cuteness on the floor. He didn't think anything
of me being a dreamer or the fact his parents were both
doctors. He said they could surgically manipulate any flaw
I had, if it made me feel better about the situation. But he
liked my large feet and the way my right eye drooped

when I was drunk off Sangria. He told the same joke five
times before realizing it really happened and it wasn't
a joke but a cosmic lapse in judgment. That same late night,
I caught him watching an I love Lucy marathon, and he recited
Poe in an Indian accent then cried because the world was too
cruel to the lonely. Then he stuck his fingers in every sofa cushion

to find the feeling of being squeezed too tightly and
held a little to closely to crumbs that once offered a
a fulfillment too strong to measure. After though, as I stared
at falling ceilings, infomercials promised self love and eggs
without shells and he stopped melting down daylight. I heard
his heavy footsteps as they made their journey to bed. He

apologized for time lost and we made up dreaming
together, heads on shoulders while his chalk fingers traced
numbers and algorithms onto my whiteboard stomach and
he admitted his work was never visible. I was in love
with him when he was taken over by numbers and figures.
No one else can say the same.