Numbers- by Samantha Webster

The first was hard to give up.
I held onto her
With brittle strength
Long-fingered hands closed tight
Around wrists no more tangible
Than high notes sung and echoed
Or drawings since crumbled to dust.
Hard to break, but easily broken
The first was the hardest
The easiest
The one most and least noticeable.
One day she was gone
And I think time and space must
Move differently around her, because
I see her every day even though she
No longer exists.

The second was the third, and
They were hard in a durable, solid
Sort of way.
Bleached hair, stripped of color,
And painted anew, they found
Each other.
Where does lost pigment go?
I joined the other used adjectives.
It took me years to learn
That it’s better to be the noun.

By 4 and 5, numbers start to lose meaning.
Why not name them after Greek letters
Hard to form and with chronology
Not immediately obvious to the casual observer?
But numbers are divisible, and so I start to divide.
A disturbing common denominator
Something so universal
It is the universe
(Because really, this can’t be real)
It’s me, it’s me, it’s me.
They don’t hurt as much as they should.

By number 6, I really start to lose count
Count and definition—
Am I counting apples, or oranges,
And while we’re on the subject,
What really is an orange?
It hurts the most—he’s a whole chunk of
My life and he’s gone.
The easiest because I don’t try.
Acceptance is complacence is demureness
Is a spoon-full of sugar.
Others fight but I’m done fighting
The entropy of the universe always increases
He was allergic to cats anyway.

I am smoothed and the numbers
Slip past me.
I’d have to be jagged to hold onto
Them, but
My sharp edges have worn away.