Pi to Unknown Places

Three point one four one five nine two six and
that’s as many places as I’ve ever known.

Because what’s the point of memorizing cold numbers?
However long, they will never touch you where you stand
apart from me, always in sight, just out of reach.

It’s an oppressive geometry, against which I strain.
So let my love for you equal the radius of a circle.
It’s a metaphor, one thing meaning another,
an X that stands for all that we cannot know.

We each grip an end and I begin to circumscribe you,
heel to toe, my body tracing a curving line in space,
and when this circle is complete, whatever its size,
I’m always exactly as far from you as when I began.
I walk this circle forever and don’t get even one step closer.

It’s beautiful, I suppose, how this circle I measure as I count my steps
will always be in precise proportion to the distance between us.
The constant cruel calculus never varies, never relents:
My circle equals twice the unbridgeable distance between us
multiplied by pi: three point one four one five nine two six
and an infinite number of other places I’ll never know.

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