Kexin Cassie Ding

2022.10.18

Knot2

I twiddle time into
    knot, a hollow heart
        with mellow angle, let it fall——
    into the folding arm, winding3 from right to
left. “interlocking in form of linking”4
Have you thought of it? Coming your way
    down along copulative bones to bones
flince’em, crack’em, twist’em5
    pouring souls inside and out
        let it fall I say
            let it fall
defuse into the outline of our memory
thin and round

    By then you’ll remember it all——
        a knot
        an estrangement
        grief
        ‘n sin

Footnotes

  1. Knot theory is a field in mathematics studying embedded circles in 3-dimensional Euclidean space.
  2. Winding number is a knot invariant in knot theory, which is inspired by the number of times a rope wraps around another rope in daily life.
  3. A beautiful and thought‐provoking line from the poem Cats’ Cradle Song: Be a Babe in Knots by Scottish mathematician Clerk Maxwell.
  4. In knot theory, flipping and cracking a knot may change its topological structure. For example, the trefoil knot and the unknot can be transformed into each other through that process, but they remain distinct as shown by their fundamental groups.