Meticulous and sober, uniform
as typeface, it fills two six-foot shelves
of thick, black notebooks. Each bound volume
holds a well-planned year: observation and equation
in rows of text arranged so evenly,
I used to think the blank white sheets he’d written on
were ruled with lines that only he could see.

My script is scrawled, irregular,
every which way on the page.

Perhaps I’ll stumble on a locked desk drawer
stuffed with scraps of paper, tattered wine-stained pages
of lost loves mourned, sins and shames confessed
in purple prose that strains against
his linear calligraphy.
Perhaps not.