Learning to Count

You learned to count, walking home from school.You learned to count leaves and sidewalk cracks,segments of dog crap, cigarette butts, and bugs. Every moment you could count somethingyou could put off the moment you would seethe face on the stoop, the handswith long fingers: the gold ring. “Beautiful,” he said, and when he said ityou didn’t believe him; you couldn’t believea stranger with that in his hands. An enemy. You learned to countthe number of breaths it would take beforeyour heart stopped rabbiting your chest. One timeyou got to twenty and it hadn’t stopped but it would. When it was time to tell your story,you stood up and before so many more strangersyou said you learned to count. You learnedto make it not matter: to postpone the inevitablewalk...

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