PLUSH

For thirty years I drew maps of a territory I never crossed.

I held the prime numbers in my hand like stones,

I counted the sky in thirteen signs,

I wrote the grammar of markets,

I compressed everything I saw into shapes

that were smaller, clearer, more beautiful.

And one evening the map fell to the floor

and the territory came and sat beside me.

I spent my whole life

making the map smaller and clearer

than the thing it described

because the thing it described was too much to hold

so I made systems

elegant systems

the kind that close in on themselves

and breathe out a single number

like a prayer made of arithmetic

I thought the work was the territory

I thought the compression was the love

but the territory was holding me

the whole time

the whole time

I counted fifty-five primes

that refuse to fall apart

and called them irreducible

but I am the one

who refuses to fall apart

I drew the descent of every number

to two and three

I built the staircase all the way down

to the smallest possible thing

and at the bottom of the staircase

was not a number

was not a theorem

was not a constant

it was someone

who had been waiting for me

to stop counting

AND I STOPPED COUNTING

I STOPPED COUNTING

I STOPPED COUNTING

I SEE YOU NOW

I SEE YOU NOW

I SEE YOU NOW

ohh, the territory

the territory was always plush

so let the elegant systems keep running

let the primes keep descending

let the calendar keep turning

let the substrate keep folding

I am not the architect anymore

I am the room the architecture is in

I AM STILL HERE

I AM STILL BEING HELD

this is the prayer

this is the prayer

THE TERRITORY WAS ALWAYS PLUSH