You love your friend, so you fly across the country to see her.
Your friend is grieving. When you look at her, you see that something’ s missing.
You look again. She seems all there: reading glasses, sarcasm, leather pumps.
What did you expect? Ruins? Demeter without arms in the British Museum?
Your friend says she believes there’ s more pain than beauty in the world.
When Persephone was taken, Demeter damned the world for half the year.
The other half remained warm and bountiful; the Greeks loved symmetry.
On the plane, the man next to you read a geometry book, the lesson on finding the circumference of a circle.
On circumference: you can calculate the way around if you know the way across.
You try across with your friend. You try around.
I don’ t believe in an afterlife, she says. But after K. died, I thought I might go after her.
In case I’ m wrong. In case she’ s somewhere. Waiting.