Counting Descent

My grandfather is a quarter century

older than his right to vote & two

decades younger than the president

who signed the paper that made it so.

He married my grandmother when they

were four years younger than I am now

& were twice as sure about each other

as I’ve ever been about most things.

They had six children separated by nine

years, three cities & one Mason-Dixon

line; there were twice as many boys as girls

but half as many bedrooms as children

which most days didn’t matter because poor

ain’t poor unless you name it so & kids

prefer playing to counting so there was never

much time to wallow in anything but laughter.

My mother was the third oldest or the fourth

youngest depending on who you ask.

She was born on a federal holiday which my

grandmother was thankful for, said the Good

Lord only got one day off when He built

the world, so one day is all she needed too.

Mom says Pops was persistent, wouldn’t give up

when he asked if he could take her down the street

to get some coffee which back then cost

two dollars less than it does now. Now

Mom is trying to stop drinking coffee but still

loves Pops, they’ve been married

for thirty-one years and have three kids

who are six years & 1,517 miles apart. My birth

took twelve hours, forty-three minutes

which is probably because my head

is five times too big. Mom said that my

head was big because I needed enough

room to read all the books in the library,

which seemed like infinity, even though

I didn’t really know what infinity meant,

but I had heard my teacher say it once

when she talked about the universe

& books felt like the universe to me.

I was pretty good at math too, until about

fifth grade when they started putting numbers

& letters together which didn’t make much sense.

My brother is seventy months younger

than me but is taller & knows more about

numbers so it doesn’t always feel like this is true.

My sister is twenty-four years of loyal

& eight years of best friend. I am the oldest

of three but maybe the most naïve, I still believe

we can build this world into something new,

some place where I can live past twenty-five

& it’s not a cause for celebration because these days

I celebrate every breath, tried to start counting

them so I wouldn’t take each one for granted.

I wish I could give my breath to the boys who

had theirs taken, but I’ve stopped counting

because it feels like there are too many

boys & not enough breath to go around.