innumerate

I tire of the calculations. The probabilities and the place in line, the countless reminders that I don’t count, the proportions and the dishes served best cold. The numbers don’t add up, at least not the way I add them. In tens and threes and multiples of nine. In ones and twos and black dog blues. There’s never number enough. There’s never a way I measure up.

Maybe it’s the medicine, walking in the footsteps of the burned down and broken, the high lonesome always howling it out in my head. Maybe it’s the blows and the blood, too many added deficits on top of the natural absences, concussed and cursed to the core. The holidays heap it on, all the ones gone missing from the rosters. The ones that wouldn’t be there if you paid them. Holes held open by the asking, the answer always in the hurt.

Time to close up the hoped for channels. Time to lock up the doors left open for words to get in. The math eludes and the good has gone uncommon. Graceless pablum served to unwilling strangers the only brand I offer, the offering all but spat back in my dumb mug. What I got either isn’t there or is the sort of thing no one wants for long. The long run of the short form is the contempt of them you counted on. The long and short of it is the same old damn alone.