To Hanson, the girl who taught me long-division

they don’t tell us
that numbers lend loans
to their immediate neighbors

privileged, i am; you told me
while staring at the definite end of
221/2

it still pains me i had to understand the paradox
before appreciating the least concept
of the world’s problem—

if more, less will divide
if less, more will divide

i’m sorry, this is so dump
Hanson, your approach was tippling

you asked 2 goes into 2
how many times: 1…

2 goes into 2
how many times: 1

but with 1
2 cannot go through

because 1 unlike a needle
has no eye for the camel’s hump.

confused? sorry, my explainer said the same thing
she said, oh my gosh, we’ll get it wrong;

let’s break 221 into
2, 21

then again, you asked
2 goes into 2
how many times: 1

2 goes into 21
how many times: 10

with a remainder of 1
my worried face bemoan

in the echoes of my dullness

you said borrowed a 0
& add it to the remainder 1 to make 10

your exclamation was, i shouldn’t worry
about collateral security—

payment of numerical loans
were with a decimal point

then again, you asked
2 goes into 10
how many times: 5

the answer therefore is 1 10 . 5
but who am i to disagree as

the calculator displayed
221/2 = 110.5

(un)fortunately,
as mad as you sounded
i practised your approach

to life; borrowing from neighbors
& with the hopes that i, too, will

solve a problem.

wouldn’t you have gotten a woodpecker an axe if it were your kin?

“Man suffers only because he takes

seriously what the gods made for fun.”

― Alan Wilson Watts

like an oak cork
wanting to explode
on the champagne’s mouth

i; a darling decorum
of divine disaster
wants this separation badly

but they, out of my shoes, tell me;
it’s the man who drinks the
bitter concoction

the foolish man?
i guess, because lozenges
have the same healing effect

i sit under this Odyssian tree
like the donkey
on a sacred farming day

thinking about how
to forgive a maiden
i had once rang

climb the heaped furniture
of our loving bed
with a god of mortal brain

the only definition I remember from the Alexandrian dictionary

in this abandoned urn of termite-cremated parchment
of the forgotten knowledge

I read

a mother is the first

married woman you loved

knowing it wasn’t right

January 10, 2024

About the writer

Sylvester Kwakye is a Ghanaian medical student, and author of Flying From Nectar To Hive. His poems have been published/forthcoming in Writing Woman Anthology Vol 3, New Note Poetry, Metachrosis Literary Magazine, Cool Beans Lit, Passionfruit Review, Rising Phoenix Press, Wingless Dreamer Publisher, Ignatian Literary Magazine, the archipelago, Sophon Lit, & fifth wheel press.