The Commutative Property

To know nine,

is to know you: 

your gait, your inflection,

the incense of your skin.

I can count the addends:

the laugh, the tease of words, 

the flannel against your chest,

the curl you hated, laying

on your forehead, the spooning

slumber, and the burble of breath.

No matter how I move

them, the commutative property

holds true. ( 3+6= 6+3)

Math IS the final authority.

You can take the nine,

decompose,

subtract one and get eight.

And in that subtraction

(9-1=8) the child begins

to recognize patterns

from the public records.

The identity property 

always comes next. 

Eventually decomposes

leaves zero.

Separation,

the same as

 (=)

putrefy and rot,

the identity of one.  

The identity of zero.

The identity of alone.

(0+1=1, 1X1= 1)

I am the inverse

now.

No addends to clutter,

no numbers to compose,

or decompose, except zero.

For me to be fluent,

(life that goes on),

I need to know the you 

and me that were the same 

as one,

and

the you and me

of two alone.

There can be no more grouping.

No associative property,

no factoring out,

no parentheses to keep us together.

(3+1) +1= 3 + (1+1)

The numbers render us

cold, factual,

minus emotions.

(We'd like to think)

love, pain, anger,

(sorrow, bitterness)

Squeaky chalk on a board

and chemical death

in the odor of a white board marker.

The numbers and operations are the way

of looking at the death

of a marriage,

thirty two years past.