Most of my friends are numbers
43, 38, 26, 73, 19
Boom—you won the lottery
So I have a lot of friends now
Most of whom, as I said, are numbers
What I really like about numbers
Is what I really like about friends
You can put them together
Subtract them, multiply, divide
They can be rational
Or irrational, variables
Or become infinite
Even imaginary!
My first imaginary number
Came in darkness
I was practicing word problems
For four hours a day
At a secondhand desk
On the second floor
Of our apartment in
Lawrenceville, New Jersey
When I suddenly realized:
This is not math
This is love
Moreover, I have come
To understand that 1+1
Equals inequality
That numbers are often
At odds with one another
For the sake of their own
Perseveration: this
This is how words can suddenly
Help us fill up a loss
Orwell said 2 plus 2 is 5
Dostoevsky said 2 times 2 is good
Nietzsche said 1 divided by 1 does not exist
And yet despite all the odds
Or, rather, along with them
I find such pleasant evens
And it is the combination of these
The ways in which they gather
And associate, as if at a party
With Steven, that renews
My faith in, if nothing else
Myself = fraternity