I am thinking of a word problem. Today I was given three pink peonies and three Bollywood movies. The other day I was given a dictionary. Yesterday I was hit in the face with a flying pigeon. More accurately, grazed. The peonies remind me of a hulking bush of them alongside a house, petals dizzy with ants. Its wing was soft against my cheek until I thought of the germs. I was walking at a constant speed determining me south on the el platform; the pigeon was also constant and direct about its course. If anyone else’s math had worked, they didn’t say “your shoe’s untied” or “if I want to go to Wrigley field am I on the right platform?” Just before we had been talking of Shakti, and Tamil, Hindi, Punjabi scripts the way the signed point from a distance is. Determined, I thought, was more accurately the word for shaking all the ants out. I looked it up (probably good form) and found that every rigid motion of the plane owes itself to either rotation, translation, reflection or gliding aviary.