Lesley Wheeler The Integrity of Prime Numbers I
dreamed I
was indiv-
isible. Then they
broke out of me, almost whole,
hunkering like icons on independent
feet, a boy and a girl lisping in binary code.He
falls ill.
Brackets crack across
his white mouth; life shudders out.
A saline drip restores him as I observe.
I can't solve for x. The hard equations sparkle.We
factor
into one
and others again.
He will heal and I will be
too dizzy to cipher. My gaunt son and his
sister, closed parentheses, laugh. Math shifts to music.