THE INVENTION OF ARITHMETIC

There was a time when we two were alone

in the dark wood, after we had lost our innocence

but before paradise was closed to us, and it was then

we learned what pleasure was and how to visit it

upon each other. There was a time before all hours

and before consequence, before we came undone, a thread

unspooled from the fine tapestry of a mad god, before

the clock had started ticking and the field was planted

and the lamb led slaughterward, before flood

and famine and the cruelties that our children

would come to visit upon each other. No one had been

born yet, the two of us having risen from the mud

of our own accord. Our bodies were identical

except for the apertures by which we swallowed

light. There was a time when we were close

as the two halves of a stone that has been dropped

from a great height, before the subtle symmetry

of shards is scoured away. We were without

history. Or at least it felt that way. I knew no other

word for love but you, the dual case, archaic form

that has been lost to time. There was a time when we

were two, when higher numbers had no meaning.