lies its twisted self around the circumference of my brain.

My age: eleven. The age I wished to be when he tumbled from earth to heaven: ten.

Or twenty. Or thirty.

Or any number beginning or ending

with the number zero, because to the ancient Greeks “zero” is a non-number.“Nothing.” μηδέν.

The number one (I had two of them then) translates to “monad”: alone. In Latin: Unus. Ancestrally: (German) Eins (Polish) Jeden.

No matter the language, the language of his body—how it laid, his head tilted back, mouth agape—is its own language of death tied to my brain with a rope. It would start in the center of his mouth (once the color red / living: vivus / now grey), and stream all the way to my ears. To my eyes. Fingers.

Isabel Hoin (she/her) is a poet, lyric essayist, and student at Old Dominion University where she is a Perry Morgan Fellow in their MFA program. Her poetry is already in or is forthcoming in Door=Jar Magazine, Blue Press Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Voices/1922 Review, La Picciolėtta Barca Review, and Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts at Northeastern University, among others. She’s a 2025 Tinker Mountain Merit Scholarship Recipient in Poetry at Hollins University. She works at The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, VA, teaching people of all ages the art of poetry and is a Lancaster, PA native.