I was able to talk myself into emerging from Mr. Purvis’s closet. I am right now sitting on the floor beneath one of his windows, the cool air from the outside pooling about me and taking a step toward helping calm my nerves. I have neither seen nor heard evidence of Henrietta’s presence since I first came into the rooms here, but it is evident that since this morning she has made great progress in tidying things up and preparing them for removal. Mr. Purvis was, apparently, quite the collector of pointless objects – the room is cluttered with boxes of torn clothing and old magazines, shelves of broken figurines and water-damaged books of poetry. An eclectic selection of this and that strewn about in an indecipherable order.

Among all of these possessions is an aquarium, and within this aquarium are two snakes named Salty and Tepid (I have no idea which is which) – he would talk about them often, but to the best of my knowledge, no one in the house had ever actually seen them before. I had for a while toyed with the thought that they might be less flesh and blood creatures and more imaginary entities, concocted by the mind of an asocial old man so that he would have at least some friends in this world.

Apparently that was not the case.

One of these snakes is a creature composed almost entirely of curves: the length of its back, the shape of every scale, the round of its eyes, even the delicate slit of its nostrils. Humans can be so angular, so irregular in places. The math is all still there, but it’s broken up into tinier and more intricate pieces. Not so for the first of these two snakes – The numbers from which it’s composed are thematic and consistent, the simple details repeating and resonating throughout the whole.

But it’s the other snake that really catches my attention, that stands out in sharp contrast against everything else in the room. Because unlike everything else, it’s just a snake.

Maybe I’m too tired, or maybe I’m going crazy. Maybe I’m losing my sight again, and once again I’ll find myself useless to everyone and cast aside to stagnate. When I look at this animal from across the room I can see that it has eyes and scales and a long slender body, just like its counterpart. But there is no math in any of it. No numbers, no functions, no expressions simple or complex. It is just a snake, and that is all.

I saw the same thing in Mr. Hurchur’s face earlier today as he bristled and bellowed against the police officers. Then and now this, both as if my eyes had developed a blind spot around which I could see, but not SEE.

Mathematics underlie everything – rocks in a gravel road, the breath of a sparrow, the way a flower’s petals will wilt… my brain cannot make sense of why my eyes would neglect to see it here, unless…

Unless I am once again becoming broken.