Lori wakes with irrational words in her mouth.
She tries to calculate them to the ninth decimal point.
In those words she locates a sleeping giant.
She kicks it, but it does not stir.
Lori falls asleep again so she may wake next to herself
since no one is there to ease her loneliness.
She slings her arm over a pillow to create the illusion
she hugs a wounded polar bear and makes it whole.
Lori wakes with the Pythagorean theorem on her tongue.
She tastes the Euclidian air of five-seventy B.C.
She sits up bent at the waist into a right angle
and feels the hypotenuse form
from the top of her head to the tip of her toes
but her mattress blocks one of the squares from forming.
copyright © 2023 Kenneth P. Gurney
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