Numbers

I was raised in a world of numbers.

My mother, with her medical math, used numbers to define dosages.

My father, with his spreadsheets, used numbers to define the quality of the air.

My brother, with his physics, used numbers to define the world around him.

Yes, I was raised in a world of numbers,

And I always thought that in the end,

I would be made of numbers too.

I spent a long time- most of my life- swimming in that number-filled sea,

Trying to find my own number-filled place

Because those numbers were all that I’d ever known.

I was drowning in that sea, but I was good at denying it-

I refused to believe that the land could hold me up any better.

I spent my life looking,

Searching,

Seeking,

Peering through the dark waters,

Trying to find something that just wasn’t there

Then one day, I happened across an island.

As I climbed ashore,

Exhausted,

Dripping,

I laid on the warm sand.

Looking up at the paradise before me,

I gasped in realization.

This Island was not made of numbers at all.

No, it was made of words!

Glorious words weaved together so beautifully,

Precisely and sloppily,

With love and with malice.

As my strength returned, I rose and glanced back at the sea.

“Yes,” I thought, “It has its own majesty.”

Numbers were so definite, so rigid, so true,

But numbers do not make me.

Turning back to the island, I knew.

This lexical jumble, this organized chaos

This was where I belonged.

I, the girl raised in a world of numbers,

Found my place in a different world.

I am not made of numbers.

I am made of words.