The Longest Division in And The Rest.

Collecting numbers
in open palms
looking for an answer
I can swallow
to an impossible equation.

Infinite innocent promises
candy-coated; sugared white
totalling more
than the sum of their whole

Cancel the remainder

And stepping-stone pathways
allude to escape.

A lifetime in brackets
subtracting
from myself
means I never added up
to anything at all

Everything is fractions;
the decimal point
is an illusion.

The problem with
the solution is
when you take away zero
something gets
left behind

I can’t make it balance

I can’t afford
to get it wrong
and be left to explain
yet again
why I tried to solve it
the way I did.