When I was five years old my mother taught me numbers
She gave me a stack of worksheets
With rows of numbers
One through twelve
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
There were ten such rows on each page
The numbers were made with unconnected dots
And the idea
Was that you were to connect the dots
And say the number out loud
And so learn to read and write numbers
As I was doing this
I pretended I was a prisoner
In a dark ancient doom
And every number was another month
And every row another year
Every page a decade
The stack became life in prison
I enjoyed my little game
Watching the months and years roll by
While my Mother struggled
To teach my older brother
Arithmetic
At the other end of the kitchen table
Double-digit addition
He couldn’t understand what she meant by
Carry the one
So he cried
And ran
But she caught him
And forced him to sit
And not understand
And cry
He looked at me
Unable to escape
And said
John
When you get to second grade
Kill yourself
I looked out the kitchen window
At sunlight flickering through trees
And kept writing numbers
Without understanding
