mostly nonsense

CCXXVII.

Do you remember back when (everything had the white-gold glow of Christmas lights and potential and) we walked the campus and shouted about hating things with joy in our voices, and it was loud, and it was exciting? Not thrilling, but affirming, like we’d lured friendship in and were going to lock it into place through sheer willpower and the speed of our speech.

commutative: a + b = b + a
associative: a + (b + c) = (a + b) + c
distributive: a(b + c) = ab + ac

These are the things we know, and the first time someone says to me “prove it”, the ground drops out beneath me.

“I’ve got one apple. You’ve got none. I’ve got more.”
“Those are just physical representations of numbers. Can you prove to me, without a doubt, that 1 is greater than 0?”

You are gone, and the ground’s dropped out beneath me, and I can’t yet explain why multiplying by zero makes everything disappear. I can’t prove that you have a voice that rumbles like laughter, but I know I want to write about it, because that’s the only way I know how to keep you with me for the next ninety-nine days.

1>0

Two years is no time at all. Plans change. People are people are the same as they would be on one continent or the next. They come back, or they don’t. These are the things we know, but don’t understand, can’t hold onto, can’t prove.