Prove it, he says

and after the Big Bang and countless
small ones, the logic of numbers over
cabernet sauvignon, constellations
traced on flanks and cheeks and arms
by stars unseen from a ground floor
apartment with the view of an alley,
the soundtrack of an idiot neighbor

hollering out an upstate Manhattan
window at midnight, I wonder at how
one pair of twinkle stars blinking can
read the other so clearly in a darkened
room, at the power of nerves’ origins
and endings to sputter synapses from
Braille to Morse, the voice leant to

each tectonic shift, at laughter when all
certain is two eyes squared equals four,
how fingers find each other - Show me,
he says - and I wonder at faith, what
must be seen to be believed, theories
woven like digits, a fraction of a smile,
the square root of a sweet, slow kiss