I was reading up on my Hellenic math: no zero yet, no
transfinite set theory, no sine or cosine, just a Brotherhood that
felt divine to its practitioners. You were back in California,
riding on the waves, your father gone awhile, and me, you said,
no consolation outside of the bed. I’ve never yet let go of zero,
the multiplier best employed on incommensurate sums, either
one on top a lovelier ratio, but when divided through becomes a
number that can’t compute but instead goes on, in proof,
diminished by each digit that it spews.
Eudoxus did not quite anticipate you, a curve that skims but
will not touch the bottom line. And then the Romans came, and
all was lost for quite some time.