The Fathoming

The vastness of the un-encountered
is breathtaking. Trust me, 
I’ve crunched the numbers. 
The math is wet fox fur 
and Baudelaire, a forbidden 
fathoming of eyelashes.

Doors grow wings. Inside that envelope, 
it’s snowing. Someone wanders
a motel hallway searching 
for an ice machine. And all along

I could have found you,
there in any dictionary. The what-if
saddens like a skylight in hell. 
Like a jar of orphaned buttons.