BLUE MATH

I inherited my father’s algebra—

like his smile or eyes,

it’s part of my arithmetic.

Early on, my body learned to mirror

the blue math that pilots his mind.

So, I don’t trust my own reality &

most mornings, I am the constant

solving for variables like risk & ruin.

I’m well educated in the language of fear

& sometimes, I can’t seem to codeswitch

out of these tongues, or breathe low enough

through the cavernous median of worry.

My father & I, we’re scared of the could

inherent in the bottomless heart of the earth.

We nightmare over possibility, over infinity,

the catastrophe of noise, of overload—

of better. I’m nervous that life isn’t plastic,

but rather, that it’s just a collection of injured hours

where nothing is linear & I’m always treading water,

working like hell to avoid the inevitable flood.

I can’t drink tequila, buy groceries, sneak

a smoke or languish in my birthday

without the alarm of destiny blaring in my chest.

I try to fight sound with tangibility,

but studying the tactile only helps so much.

It’s like I embody the what if, the ever-stemming

overfunction of a hammerhead circling—

swimming endlessly, snared in a perpetual cycle

of shallows. So, each day, I recalibrate the suspicion

in my genes: I track the pinpoint I can’t identify,

eyes low like an astronomer scouring the blueprint

for a new constellation. For some other sign.