A Mathematician in Cognitive Decline Pens Final Messages to 14 of His Lovers

After he had watched the movie {proof} he got a little angry and then quite sad

His own brain harbored no delusions but it was shrinking and had gone from a fusion reactor of ideas and insights to a sputtering engine with bad carburetion

And the movie did drive home how finite Earthly time can be

So he suddenly felt the urge to settle his affairs of the heart

Got out many pens and markers and dozens of sheets of his letterhead stationery

Wrote a sonnet that would apply to every one of the fourteen significant lovers he had had

And then wrote thirteen more sonnets similarly themed but unique to each lover

Retaining the final line in its original form for all fourteen of them

It was the line that was most absolutely true yet would mean something different to each person:

I so regret we did not make more love.

He sent most of the messages by snail mail. Two he scanned and e-mailed. One, the sonnet in its original form, he kept, because the lady was dead.

.

As often happens, attempts to settle affairs end up with the affairs being more unsettled than ever

but that,

to use a phrase found in many mathematics textbooks,

is “beyond the scope” of this account.