Schmuckumentary

I wrote four poems about you

from a dozen too-sweet cookies,
two plates of pork guts,
an unkept promise
to teach me how to parallel park,
and a look that lasted
half a second longer
than safety allowed.

By any reasonable math,
we were nothing—

a crumpled receipt,
a muted afternoon,
loose change
warming my pocket.

But heartbreak is illiterate at arithmetic.
It rounds everything up—
counting silence as proof,
mistaking words for oath,
reading proximity
as fate.

I thought numbers could be kinder.

Was a seven-year stitch
undone in five?
Is memory a writer,
or a bad driver too,
forever circling the same block?

I laugh because
I’m bad at math—
still, I tried to reconcile the figures
to audit
this loss.

I wanted a number
small enough.

But I don’t have it.

So this is where we are:

I already wrote four poems about you.

Still—

on this side street,
my car crooked along the gutter,
I fill in the blanks

and write
another.