Everything
We are eating dessert when the urge overcomes her
to scrawl mathematics, the night ticks on
—I drink my whisky, her Merlot grows warm—
until, sudden-smiling, she holds out a paper:
a simple equation with nothing crossed out;
laid out like a mantrap for ultimate truths,
as if to say: Darling! I mastered it all
the stars and the spaces, energy, time—
why, everything, down to those several young faces,
who call you only on your other phone.
Watch her face while we pause there:
in this moment not questioned or answered.
So maybe there is one: some master equation;
some sequence of symbols a lover might write
on a napkin close-angled to catch at street lighting,
one elbow leant on an outdoor table,
ignoring the promise of rain in the cool summer air
—a young woman passes, all little black dress—
some sort of equation to grab the whole mess:
the warping, the weaving of mass for an atom;
the elegant building of colours for light
to shade any evening
which I might have hurried through
to get here tonight. She may lick her lips
—I might feel ice mutter in my glass—
but our moment breaks. She crushes the napkin,
takes a drink and a breath, says:
There are in the maths no stains for the tablecloth,
no moth by the light bulb, no artificial flower…
—She shrugs, expansively, moderate drunkly,
her black bob asway, flesh rounds beneath fabric—
…and how can my numbers ever come quite to terms
with the small sharp man with his small sharp knives
opening the oysters in the back. Distant lightning,
a rumble… She drops crumpled paper. We flee
a little too damply, play-fighting and hugging,
beneath such a midnight enfolded in cloud
but not annotated on any scale which we can reach
from her bed. Elsewhere, rain continues,
a discarded napkin straightens, symbols blur, merge,
and the world moves on, while we make a better maths
for a little while.
Ian Badcoe (he/they) is a non-binary poet from Sheffield. He has a songwriting collaboration with German Indie singer/composer Hallam London. They recently released the album they have been working on for the last decade. Website: https://www.ianbadcoe.uk Hallam’s website: https://hallamlondon.com/