Equation
BY ROSALIE MOFFETT
At the CVS with its liquor
secure behind the counter, the cashier
raised her eyebrow, said Worried
or excited? I took a pen,
in fifth grade, to my report card,
made every minus
into a plus.
A certain kind of person hates to fail a test.
There’s a range of options.
For those suspicious of arithmetic,
the pricier Clearblue tests can tell you
in words what you want or do not want
to know, though some illiterate windstorm
will do the intolerable
math anyway: adding fat, dramatic clouds
then subtracting them back
into the imaginary
through a small slit—a minus sign
can take nothing
from nothing. Hopeful is what I said
and walked home
letting my breath out
where it appeared
in the frigid air
to precede me
like the idea of living
clearing my path.
I could already feel a new kind of love
using me
to calculate
an unfathomable sum.
