Prime Numbers

The day the world flinched, like sunlight through a coma
they carried their dead on advertisement boards.
Surgeons waited like ignoble cannibals
to strip out their organs or lay them
in persistent unconsciousness.
Only when dust crusted on survivors
I realised that I too bled.

Talking of disaster, my professor once told me
“Your rationale’s divorced from the turmoil of grief.”
Yet that day at least, I felt sickness and fear
spew through my torso like lava.
I can explain the guilt of survival and carry on
skimming the surface of platitudes
but in my twisted steel and phosphorous dreams
a putrid silence before imploring screams
plays out in Dolby Digital.

I thought I had an iron glove
I’d write the next line and my bones resist
the crush of that sea of blue light.
We are divisible
but only by One or ourselves.