THE AL-KHWARIZMI IN YOU

There's an algebra
for all of it:
the windmills

behind the casino

turning their giant Xs
into late night whys,
the moon's curvature

like a midnight calculus,

the tide rising

into the asymptotic

longing of a line.
Even for the arc

of a brand new

table tennis paddle
that your sweaty hand
now grips
or the velocity of the balls

(larger than they've

ever been)
spinning across the net
between your namesake
and your imagination.
Where he,

still a baby

burps and sighs
asleep in a crib.
The trajectory
seeming derivative,
almost always
of the desire.
Two Greek letters

on different sides
of an equation,

each ciphering
the other,

each signifying

an absence

by their italicised presence.
Daddy, Daddy,
don't you know
I miss you,

his sigh says.
He rests his head

on the hollow

of your chest.
Asks when

are you coming back?
There's an algebra
for all of it.
What you've
done with the days
since you left,
what you tried to do,
or might have tried,
had you correctly
solved for all the variables,
though you had
no slope to graph,

no slide to rule them.

A gulf

with no echoes

for answers.

As he whispered

to you once,

his lips are

an empty set now.

Two brackets
attempting an embrace
because kisses,

however long ago,

count and multiply

in the abacus of memory.
Moments that

can only approximate

an algorithm.
There's an algebra
for all of it,

the floating

function of the seagulls,

the breaking

but unbroken waves,

the ghostly geometry

of the foam.

Perhaps even

for how two pairs

of footprints,

non-linear as any equation

whose notation

haunts the horizon,

might solve

all this sand

between them.