Learning to Count

You learned to count, walk­ing home from school.
You learned to count leaves and side­walk cracks,
seg­ments of dog crap, cig­a­rette butts, and bugs.

Every moment you could count some­thing
you could put off the moment you would see
the face on the stoop, the hands
with long fin­gers: the gold ring.

“Beau­ti­ful,” he said, and when he said it
you didn’t believe him; you couldn’t believe
a stranger with that in his hands. An enemy.

You learned to count
the num­ber of breaths it would take before
your heart stopped rab­bit­ing your chest. One time
you got to twenty and it hadn’t stopped but it would.

When it was time to tell your story,
you stood up and before so many more strangers
you said you learned to count. You learned
to make it not mat­ter: to post­pone the inevitable
walk because all walks led past that stoop
with the face and the ring and what in his hands.

So many times you have told your story now;
so many times that you could say it back­wards
and so many times that it is a bene­dic­tion
of all you never wanted. The feel of an oak leaf
crushed snugly beneath your boot: one. His hands
around your neck: two. The worn locks you checked
and touched and needed to keep you inside: three.

Your story, writ­ten by coin­ci­dence and
rewrit­ten by mem­ory, no longer mat­ters.
The num­bers
no longer mat­ter.
Those things
no longer count.
You see a paper bag on the street
and it is just any other paper bag.
When you get home, no locks will keep you safe.

When you get home, no words will undo it. No one
needs this story any­more, least of all you.
You count the things that mean some­thing now.
One: heart that is cer­tain, brain that thirsts,
body that is clean.
Two: hands to hold the hands of your lover,
eyes to see the sky and sun.
Three: breaths it takes to stop cry­ing. That’s all. Stop now.

You count.

© 2005 by Hal­sted M. Bernard