Frequently Asked Question #4 (Poem by Tita)
How old are they?
That depends, do you mean
how long have their bodies held breath? Or,
how long have their bones existed on earth?
Because I still have his bones.
I still have them as dust in a plastic bag which —
now that we’re talking about it — is probably
older than all of them.
But maybe we are all like that: pieces
of us have always existed
in another form.
And it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Because my sister grew those bones in her body,
so, even before, they were once something else,
weren’t they?
Anyway, if we always existed before,
maybe that means we’ll always exist.
So, I’ll keep his bones.
I’ll keep them as dust and
I’ll keep them in a plastic bag.
And I’ll also keep that bag in a well-polished box
that was once a tree growing tall in a grove somewhere.
(Don’t worry, we etched his name
on the box, so we won’t go confusing it with anything else, like a tree.)
And he’ll always exist.
So, to answer your question, they are one
and four
and two
and eight
and, also,
infinite.
