algorithm by Avery London (15, California)*

[Content warning: drinking, mentions of suicide]​

numbers to numbers to darling faces— 
the union of i and μ. 
as if a term could rouse its whisper 
and whittle a heart to binary. 
I know you’re not a button, hun 
because pushing won’t bring you back to life.​

---

let me evaluate your function: ​

f(x) = a soul meant to die at 15, surrounded by no-one, 
where x is our laughter 
and believe me, babe, it’s undefined ​

a gun isn't a gun until you ferment it 
and chug the trigger to a gag. 
it's all math. just numbers. 
but we ain't hyperbolic

on Monday, I foiled the pews as they 
sectored your body 
padded with caramel puddy, 
transforming my ziskeit to a system of vectors

I did my homework at the funeral. 

crisp, creased paper curled in your palm 
an algebraic water lily damp with tearing deluge 
drew my mind from discordant addendum 
back to your factors: 
(x - drinking)(x + me)

if you showed me how you worked, 
maybe I could’ve solved you. 
if I didn't yell, 
maybe you wouldn't’ve done it. 

I'm the variable.

logically, a face can't be ubiquitous. 
it can't reflect on every plane 
every intercept of redwood abutting soil 
those barking titans you adored 
almost as much as me. until you didn't. 
I don’t see your eyes in exponents 
a beautiful brain in a bell curve 
what happens when you divide death by 0. 
it just don't compute. 

you were my only constant— 
now, you're desargue’s worst fears 
baked into an infinite casket 
where our parallel lines converge. 
you're unprovable. I'm left in two dimensions.

show me what it all means, duckie:

(imaginary martyrdom + empty bottles) over (hopeless hope)
outputs a tsebrokhn quotient 
that fills notebook after notebook, 
thrown against memory-spattered stucco walls 

last month, your coefficients coincided 
and I’m left to compose an impossible inverse. 

this month, I burned our problems. 
their cinders ascended like noether, descartes, 
mirzakhani, euler, kovalevskaya, ramanujan, 
every nerdlet that tried to make sense 
of a senseless world. 
it was beautiful 
and I still saw rasters in your face. 
the angles aflame.

next month, I try to measure your circumference 
and find there's less and more of you left 
than before. you're quantitative. 
I eat under your redwoods and 
see a forest waltz between faeries and phantoms. 
I dance a little. a lot. 
in a copse of fading echoes, 
you eclipse digits, 
and like a waning gibbous, 
your face is blurring. 

numbers are static. 
things aren't meant to last. 
faces to faces to darling numbers and back.