Zero to Zero

I was born in a room painted with lullabies,

 where the ceiling spun like a mobile of stars,

 each one a promise,

each one a debt.

Childhood came like a flood of crayons,

scribbled joy and scraped knees,

 a swing set that taught me how to fly and fall in the same breath.

 My mother’s voice was a lighthouse,

 my father’s silence, a fog.

Adolescence cracked me open like a geode,

 shimmering with secrets,

 but jagged at the edges.

 I kissed someone under a bleacher once,

 and it felt like stealing fire from a god who didn’t care.

 I lost a friend to distance,

 another to despair.

 The ledger…

Began to fill.

College was a carnival of minds,

 bright lights,

 cheap thrills,

 and the slow erosion of certainty.

Love…

Tricked me,

for I learned to love someone who didn’t love me back,

 and that was worth something,

 even if it cost me sleep.

Career…

Began like a train I didn’t remember boarding.

 I wore ambition like a tailored suit,

 but it itched at the seams.

I engineered…

Things that crumbled,

 led meetings that dissolved, and smiled

through the static of fluorescent lights and coffee breath.

Marriage…

Such a garden was this planting in shifting soil.

 We danced in spring rain,

 argued in drought,

 and held hands as the seasons spun like roulette wheels.

Children…

 Tiny revolutions with sticky fingers and questions I couldn’t answer.

 I gave them my stories, they gave me my reflection.

Middle Age…

Crept in like rust gathering on a favorite bike.

 I watched my parents shrink into shadows,

 and my own face become a map of places I never meant to visit.

 Regret and pride played chess atop my soul,

all for a stalemate.

Octogenarian years…

Became a quiet applause after a play I barely understood.

 I counted coins and memories,

 both tarnished,

 both precious.

 I sat in a chair that remembered more than I did,

 and waited for the mail like it might contain a second chance.

Older than old…

I wait.

 The sky has become my ledger,

 the earth,

a vault.

 I’ve laughed enough to balance the tears I never showed.

 I’ve broken hearts and mended fences.

 I’ve been the villain and the hero in stories no one will retell.

And if life was a balance sheet,

 joy and sorrow,

gain and loss,

 love and loneliness.

Yes…

 I am zeroed out.

A perfect sum of everything and nothing.

Who could complain when the math is this clean?