Icosahedron

He sees them for what they are,
these photographs, though still they can resemble
a shape like a wing when spread across this table,
and they sideways cut the membraned layers beneath his eyelids,
the slick part that slides across the part called "hazel."

A twenty-sided construct,
a thing that nearly looks like a sphere,
rolls almost as well as a sphere,
and each side is a photograph
and, even though there are twenty of them,
when it does stop rolling nineteen of them won't be facing up at him,
and sometimes he'll be up all night,
sometimes he'll bat it across the floor all night
just to hear the crackling noise it makes
when it's clear on the other side of the room.

These clever arrangements of salts and metals
add together quickly, like equations are supposed to do in books,
but can never solve, are never totaled;
the palm of this hand and the way it rests against that shoulder
remain so while other, clearer photographs develop.
The blur here in this corner, he will assume it implies motion.