The Sum Of Us

In the beginning

there was not God.

There was counting.

Before prayer,

before sin,

before heaven was franchised, 

someone stacked stones

and realised

quantity could replace mystery.

That was the first betrayal.

One plus one is two.

Say it like a prayer.

Say it like a hammer

driving bone into bone.

It doesn’t care about children.

It doesn’t care about graves.

It doesn’t care about hunger,

or rage,

or how fear curls in your chest.

It balances.

Always balances.

Triangles were cleaner than prophets.

Ratios quieter than doubt.

Geometry cut the sky into obedient pieces.

Trigonometry whispered secrets like torturers.

Calculus measured your despair

before you felt it.

We invented zero.

A perfect circle.

A mouth open without a scream.

Assigned to people.

Zero value.

Zero mercy.

Zero hope.

A ledger of the flesh.

A census of the soul.

We say mathematics is neutral.

So was the cross.

So was the rope.

So was the bullet

before it was aimed.

Neutrality is a myth told by tools.

You don’t need faith when you have proof.

That’s the seduction.

Science, bureaucracy, mathematics —

all faith forms in different robes.

They bleed the same devotion.

One plus one is two.

Unless one is power

and one is fear.

Then one plus one is submission.

Unless one is hunger

and one is silence.

Then one plus one is famine.

Unless one is god

and one is insecurity.

Then one plus one is war.

You think genocide begins with hatred?

No.

It begins with enumeration.

List them.

Number them.

Classify them.

Reduce them.

Once a human becomes a number,

erasing them

is administrative.

Clerical.

Mundane.

Divine.

We count bones, we count votes,

we count dollars, we count followers.

We kneel to certainty.

We kneel to predictability.

We kneel to the illusion

that if it adds up, it must be truth.

But tell me —

One trauma plus one generation

equals what?

One lie plus one census

equals what?

One decree plus one orphan

equals what?

Not two.

Never two.

Always metastasis.

Parallel lines never meet.

Life never sums.

Life never balances.

Life never forgives arithmetic.

Repeat it until it feels like oxygen.

Repeat it until doubt sounds insane.

Repeat it until anyone who questions it

looks dangerous.

Because they are.

If one plus one

is not guaranteed, 

then nothing is.

Not borders.

Not hierarchies.

Not gods.

Not you.

And that is the real terror.

Not that mathematics lies.

But that it works

without conscience.

It works when you design a bridge.

It works when you design a bomb.

It works when you calculate interest

so precisely

a man dies owing money

to a number.

It works.

And because it works,

we mistake it for morality.

Obedience is written in ink.

Faith is counted in ledgers.

And the body trembles

under every summation.

Every calculation a blow,

every diagram a noose.

We measure love, measure suffering, measure grief.

We optimise obedience.

We classify dissent.

We ration hope.

We distribute terror.

We file souls under columns:

productive, neutral, disposable.

And in the end,

the equation closes.

Numbers do not confess.

They only conclude.

Life, however,

never adds up.

In the beginning

there was counting.

In the end

there will be counting still:

bodies, losses, regrets.

The sums remain cold.

The book of bones waits.

Indifferent.

Implacable.

Numbers do not plead.

They do not pause.

They do not forgive.

They only conclude.

And we are left

reckoning nothing.