percentages

life begins in percentages, inevitably, before you're alive

your half-formed body soaking in amniotic fluid, already analyzed,

you're at x-percentile this and that and everything,

and then you have the misfortune to be born.

then: oh, she turned over when she was two weeks old! she'll go to harvard.

or, he -- he isn't two years old and is grinning at the birds,

bright, delighted conversations but he isn't talking much yet,

shouldn't he be, statistics say, shouldn't --

and you put yourself up against the math, you say,

statistically, i should have been this, that's what the numbers said,

and i'm not, i did not go to harvard, i have not done was i was supposed to do,

i am wrong, wrong, wrong.

fault the romans, i suppose, as usual: the x out of a hundred,

that there is a limited supply of everything,

that only 48% of marriages -- 10% of old friendships --

percentages root in a dividend, a number divided by another.

i slice myself up in so many ways, juggling the numbers, telling myself i'm not a failure,

and telling myself i am a failure, i have done this, i have done this,

i have not, and i have not.

life begins in percentages and inevitably ends the same:

you get what anybody gets:

you get a lifetime.