there is a beauty

in numbers

that so many

miss

and it

saddens me

so many things

would lose their

value

if numbers were

as irrelevant

as some say they are

like the number 11

side by side on the

front screen

of a teenage girl’s phone

as she stares incessantly

waiting for a call

that will never

come

she’ll be exhausted

come tomorrow

but she wouldn’t dare

miss him

she’ll fall asleep

at school

number two pencil

in hand

sharpened so carefully

by the pencil sharpener

whose blade

is now

missing

or the man

as he avoids staring

at the clock

on the bar wall

very clearly reading

6 am

his children are

getting ready for school

but he’s not there

and neither is his

wife

not really, anyway

her mind is elsewhere

on the man

who smiled at her

at the metro

yesterday

and convinced her

to stay away

from the tracks

after all,

the train to 22nd street

was coming,

and it would be a shame

for her to get

in

its

way

no matter how easy it would have been

even as i sit here

staring at my screen

at exhausted o’ clock

having deleted

words upon words

for the umpteenth

time,

it’s so very obvious

to me

how different

this poem

would

have been

if i had not