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  • Falling in Love with Numbers
  • Tracy K. Smith (bio)

I.

They say it’s either in you or beyond you, as with love of water or competition—

the way the boy at the blackboard has no choice but to dance from sum to sum, no choice

but to tremble, it feels so good being right.

II.

One of two women has phoned again for my father. I recognize her voice

and choose the right name. She is pleased for this and asks him about me.

What can he say? “She’s fine.” He switches ears and nods me away. [End Page 520]

III.

Sheep never made you think of sleep. Too many questions. Why they were always in books about God.

What it meant to be chosen, if you still felt damp and afraid. Whether counting them

was just another phrase for leap after leap over nothing you wanted to clear.

IV.

I wanted to be fed. To eat the food and believe in the blessing. I wanted those who sat at my mother’s table to sate me. I didn’t want to cry. Only to know that what welled inside was her— that I housed her alive.

V.

He clouds the board with figures. Like birds

that ascend out of nowhere, they are no more his than what holds them together.

He only knows to count them; that the heart beats, and without wings.

Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Boulevard. She is currently a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

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