I was punched in the face on Halloween and I was in slow classes but in the instant of the punch I understood higher math, and you topology is often described as rubber-sheet geometry but that’s only sort of true, the One Second of Understanding became an endless curved space I moved through running away to hide, bringing my hand up to touch my nose, lowering it to see bloody fingers—these operations disclosed the act of making surfaces, being a polyhedron, removing one face from it, and knowing about claims that once that is done the remaining polyhedron can be flattened into a plane: my face and body were about to become a world-changing proof.
Gregg Williard is a writer and visual artist based in Madison, Wisconsin. His recent work can be found in Collidescope, Denver Quarterly, On the Seawall, Cult, Wordrunner Digest, Star 82 and elsewhere.