The mathematician’s skeleton propped in the corner of the anatomy and physiology room, not far from where he used to teach. Strung together with wire and metal pins. Sometimes he was used for instruction, though mostly he held feather boas and Mardi Gras beads. One semester he wore a wide-brimmed sun hat, someone’s lost and never found.
Equations slipped away, into a permanent bone density. The skeleton remembered one, about orbital distance, though that had less to do with his eye sockets and more to do with planets. In the quiet of calcium space, it didn’t seem an important distinction. It was all space, they were all planets.
Flesh and blood talked and talked. He jiggled with the movement of their mouths. The springs on his jaw bounced his teeth into each other, clattering old fillings. Low whispers matched their thrumming heartbeats and sharp breaths. He felt outward through his ribcage, absorbing vibrations through calcaneus and phalanges.
Two hooks held the hemispheres of his skull together. Unhinged, his rough bone bowl hid love notes, broken pencils, and a piece of mint gum stuck to his petrous ridge. One diamond cufflink had been embedded soon after he was pieced and delivered—drilled and covered with putty. At the last, a kiss landed with no vibration at all. The skeleton did not remember why.
Memory did not store in bones, but leached out with the soft tissue, light as breath. Marrow held strength and silence. Persistence and endurance. Now that he was stripped of all else, the mathematician’s skeleton aligned with granite and sediment and quartz. His contents kept out of time. Not a thought, but a truth. All bones carry it.
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Janna Miller has published works in SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, and Scissors and Spackle. Librarian, mother, and minor trickster, Janna has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. Generally, if the well runs dry, it is not her fault.