Numbers

DS Kingsley

One
This is draft 358 of Poem 1. Yes, I fucking counted.

In the past, you asked me in three separate occasions if I would ever write about you. The last
time was two years ago, 2 days before you dropped the bomb to which I am still waiting for
the fallout to end you, with your right hand on the door and your face half-turned towards
me, and you say I like you before bolting out. For a solid ten minutes I sat at the bottom of
the stairs alternating between asking myself if it really happened and calling you an awkward
idiot in my head.

Two
Since that day, I stopped writing because it was the first time words were not enough. The
pages of my thesaurus stutter as I try to tell the story between the clouds of breath you make,
the way the right corner of your lips turn up when you have something to say.

But this is your poem. This is me conceding.

I started counting instead.

Three
Statistically speaking, the top 2% of people in this world have a hairpin slim chance of running
into each other on the street. This is not just a case of probability that we met where we did
and it took three years to find pieces of ourselves in each other. It felt like a myth whispered
beneath the static of the radio and for months, years after, its like a bedtime story I listen to in
my head. But lately Im not sure if it was better to stay awake.

Four
We treated it like a one-way ticket to another galaxy and there was no turning back. We are not
comets dropping into earth because we thought no one needed a fallback when they get to
heaven. We left our white flags on the mountain caps because we thought wed never have to
know surrender.

For a while I forgot what it was like to ever give up.

Five
I thought our points of tangencies were enough to cover the distances between us.

Six
If this were algebra, we solve for x. The unknown value to which we transpose parts of the
equation to arrive at something definite.

At some point you started wondering if it was the right answer. I broke apart the letters and
numbers, rearranged them like a puzzle with a million pieces and it left my hands dusty with
chalk and your heartbeat all over the surface.

Suddenly you stopped writing and said there was no answer.

Seven
Some days this feels like a church burning to the ground but maybe the god living in there was
lucky enough to break through the window.

Eight
You are zero guilt and a hundred percent entitlement. We cant disprove theories by saying we
dont like them but you do that anyway. You are 6 parts repression and 2 parts spite. Im not
the one who looked for an escape but you are the one whos angry.

Nine
You buried us 6 feet below your consciousness and called it moving on.

Ten
Null hypothesis: I dont have any means to prove scientifically that I have a soul but it hurts. It
might be just a quarter of an evidence to prove it does. But what about having one if your truth
cant save you?

Eleven
I started going to the gym so that one day, I can throw a 500 pound barbell at you like its
nothing.

Twelve
If I were to divide it in fractions, 2/3 of me wants you to shatter but you never believe me when
I say I can beat you. This isnt to say you are weaker. This is to say you are good enough to be
an equal.

Thirteen
Im still sure I arrived at the right answer.

Fourteen
The first time I ever waited for you was when you were running a race. Waiting by the finish line
meant not running the race sometimes, but I had legs of steel and a stubborn mind. Having
something to run towards in the future is something people take years to find, and for a while
we held on to that, like we found the heartbeat of the universe and no one else could ever
know what it sounds like.

You pulled a white flag out of nowhere and expected me to walk away.

Fifteen
One thing I learned is that when you curl your hands into fists long enough, there would be
half-moons staining your palms for days on end. Yesterday, the infinity we began was
supposed to be 871 days. Remembering is equivalent to driving yourself face first into the
ground and your thoughts stutter beneath your tongue. Its crossing the street and not looking
left and right. Its driving to nowhere without a license and a car trunk full of ghosts. Its
breaking into your old house and peeling the paint where you stapled all those memories you
were asking me not to come back to.

Sixteen
Some days I dont know what to do with my hands. I hold something and when it breaks, it
turns into something new. On days like that I pray to whichever god is available on the hotline
and ask that your hands can hold the expanding universe like it the apple falling into Newton,
finite between the weave of your fingers, all the undecipherable suddenly making sense. That
you could live forever because it was just time you needed to shape the world with the palms
of your hands. That whichever god that was who put the dream of infinity in your veins would
never allow you to collapse under the weight of thousands of years.

But the hardest prayer to say is when I ask for the miracle that would allow me to stand beside
you through all those years.

Seventeen
Im a fucking atheist.

Eighteen
Mathematicians say that the opposite of infinity is zero. What kind of conviction does it take to
commit to waiting forever? But Im still waiting for you at the finish line.