Mathematics
As a child I was told to be good
if I wanted to get to heaven
and I always wondered why
and I never dared tell them,
these tall beings
who knew better than I, walking upright
in their well-ironed lives, shoes shined
and set apart,
that if heaven was like church
I didn’t want to go.
Too many
would be missing,
according to the math.
The world
minus us
leaves out all the rest.
I was told that each body had a soul
heaven-sent, but where
is the soul factory in the sky
spitting out a soul
every 0.24 seconds,
and at what point do the angels
throw up their hands in despair
shucking the big book of names
aside, revolting
in utter weariness
and shouting Enough?
How does it come,
the soul?
On tiptoe or trumpet,
by flood or by love,
stars dividing or falling
one by one
through the dark?
I didn’t ask any of it
because I knew without knowing
that it wasn’t the place
or the time.
The only question I ventured
was if that was really
how babies were made
and she couldn’t look me in the eye
but then
neither could I.
Eyes on the math book,
sums and certainties, adding
doesn’t mix with taking,
dividing with
multiplying.
Add and subtract.
Seven days
and the world was made,
and destroyed again in forty,
a day
in the eye of the One
is as a thousand years,
thirty three years
was a lifetime, in three days
a temple was raised.
Division.
Waters dividing from dry land,
womb from rib bone, a son
from a mother,
I will set my mark
upon him forever, dividing brothers
from each other, one
have I loved, the other
I hated, heaven splitting
and its own falling
like lightening.
Multiply.
And fill the earth,
I will multiply
your pain in childbirth,
multiply fish in the nets
of a fisherman, multiply bread
in the hands
of a man
feeding a world, a time,
a woman.
Who is it dividing,
taking,
making,
leaving, is it the many
or the One? These questions
will not be still, they wait
for the day I close
the math book,
the black book
the white page,
the red pen.
Heart times soul
times blood times earth,
and the greatest
of these is love.
Image credit: Pixabay
This poem Mathematics holds questions that were sitting in my body since childhood. Now at forty they’re out and breathing. But it’s not really about the questions because I’m not looking for answers. This piece honors the hard work of reclaiming my identity and my autonomy from the hands that tried to claim them both.
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Typing a comment after reading this feels sacrilegious. If we were sitting together in a small, candlelit circle somewhere, I would let you see the awe at work on my face—the deep mystery you’ve woven working its way into my heart. I would sigh deeply and let my eyes close as my hands come to rest over my heart.
♥️♥️♥️