Sometimes I like to think in even numbers

because Prime numbers tend to lend a connotative tone

Sometimes when I close my eyes to slumber

I take a chalk full of pleasant dreams on loan

 

I skip one because one is a lonely song

I run in a pack, wolves run in packs too

I am a wolf, surrounded by strangers

 

Two: When I was little the run pa tum,

rum pa pum thump,

of machine lifted my soft chest

up and down, up and down

This newborn heart beating with scraps from a dump

Nickel tooth smile curving chubby cheeks

I wasn’t then, so meek

 

I skip three: Three are the nights slumped,

head buckled between stubby knees,

cackling in fear against the raised voices of the puppeteer

 

Four: When I was small my grandfather would take me to the docks

hooking needles into fish, carving their sides too much like my own for sport

While me and my sister ran the shore in soggy socks

I always fall just a little too short

 

I skip five: Five is the vice like cut throat snippets of mother to child

 

Six: When I was too young for big words like authority and distrust

my father would cuddle up under the tall ceiling in our house

watching movies that curled his daughters into disgust

blood spurting, knees rolling, we were like a mouse

 

I skip seven: Seven is the hostility of nature to man

 

Eight: When I was just quick enough to catch my mother’s doubts

I slung the world into a pew of shouts

Soaking the house in a city of sheets

Where nobody in the world could pick apart our broken heart beats

 

I skip nine: Nine is the empty mocking dollar signs hanging from our throats like neon signs for the poor.

 

Ten: When I finally got my crap together

I see the world in vibrancy,

When I bridge together the islands between me and my sister

The one who once tied me up like a hog in the dirt of my own sanctuary

with a rope made for jumping kids, so she could be a kid

When I finally tasted, even for a moment adolescent bliss

I like to sometimes think in even numbers

to shade out the unpleasantness of my woe

To take the terrible and spin it to finest silk

to see the sun hiding like a kitten behind the rain clouds

To part my sleep glued eyes and speak in tongues of all kinds

 

Sometimes we all think in even numbers,

when the prime seem too hard to be

this is okay because even numbers can be picked apart
separated into tinier stories they ran sum up prime numbers into even
changing negative to positive
blue into orange

 

Even numbers are safe