The point became a line.

The line, a triangle.
The simplest shape.

The triangles bred and twisted,
replicating themselves.
Layering, one on top of the other.

Spinning and spilling over,
They drew into themselves the spaces between
encountering, to their surprise,
circles
who dreamt of spinning spheres.

The two strangers fought,
but decided the better of it,
and instead, grew enamored.

Interbred.
Interlocked.
Sweating hands grasped in mutual, moaning ecstasy.

Sharing secrets immemorial:
the mysteries of angles,
the enigmas of Pi.

To create square and ellipse.
Hexagon, sphere, and cone.
Parabola and hyperbola,
Chladni figure and Gabriel’s horn.
Cassini’s oval and torus’s knot.

Together,
they forged new realities,
becoming all that is:

All shapes, asymmetric and isotropic.
All sounds, harmonic and dissonant.
All numbers, real and imaginary.
All beings, fantastic and factual.
All thoughts, fleeting and terminal.

And all those things we mistake for the living—
and for the dead.

[Editor’s Note: The publication of this poem was made possible by a donation from John Klima during our annual Kickstarter.]