The Origin of Zero

I knew I loved you when
we fought about the origin of zero.
When I realized we had both
dreamt of telling our children,
We invented the zero, you know.

Your Mayans used it as a placeholder, I would say;
as a nil, a nought, a null and void.
While my Indians saw it as a number,
its own identity.

When our foreheads touched
in that sacred place where there
was no placeholder, no number
to express the time that it took
to give up my righteousness –
that’s when our love, as natural
as the zero itself, began.

What matters is that:
the Greeks didn’t invent it;
picking a number
between one and a hundred is impossible;
we don’t confuse it with an “O”;
it doesn’t change a number
when added.

Now we move with the wisdom of ancients
into that time where what was null is everything,
where what was our number is now our children’s.

© 2009 Simona Supekar