The universe prefers odd numbers. It leans, obsessed with what’s next. It likes syllogisms, the arguments of sonnets: if A equals B, then C. The ground-level common denominator, the blood-red whorl at the base, is not an answer but a turning. Does that leave you dizzy? What can I say that would reassure either of us? Even our prayers have to catch hold as if we grabbed a spoke of a merry-go-round and tried to convince the universe of what we want stopped, reversed. What it gives us instead: this bad-smelling beautiful bloom. “Let go, let go,” is what it says, and who wants to hear that?
