Cicadas sing around a firefly invaded air. Bug sounds wrap around my shoulders like melodies. I let myself fall on flower fields, relaxing every strained muscle on my limbs. My bones crumble and turn into stars in the dark sky. Inhaling peace, exhaling calm.  As I start abandoning my body and releasing my soul into a soaring ecstatic cloud, numbers creep around and get a grip around my neck. Their nails start gripping the back of my head, making me bleed, poisoning me, and destroying my peaceful, uncountable thoughts. As poison makes its way through my head, anxiety and the presence of my postponed activities with running time emerge from the dark. I enter a stage of failed transfiguration, and the blinding white on my mantel turns blood numeral red. I gasp for air, choking on fingers of disgrace and worth. Death in the shape of daunt stabs its scythe on my bosom, ribs exploding, heart punctured, lungs dysfunctional, sight closed, life gone. Tranquility, happiness, and trust, killed me.

    Wood holds my young body in a swing set. The wind slams against my sweated face. Refreshment is comfort, a smile is slowly formed on my thin lips, and my deformed teeth are exposed. Pure, true, undeniable happiness. ‘Enjoy yourself, soon you’ll be anguish’. I ignore these wind-spoken words and continue to indulge in my cherry candy. The laughs of my surroundings are my biggest worry, grandma can’t hear me from home. Bicycle wheels draw paths on the flying dust, and green eyes assemble themselves and look at me from afar. Eventually, the maid dares to utter some sounds; fifteen more minutes, grandma said to be home by ten thirty. Numbers, time, dependence, fear. Grandma can’t hear me crying from her couch. Sobs pierce the breeze, and my voice is carried towards a mending heart. The clock strikes, my fears arrive, an impact responsible for my aging. I open my tear-filled eyes, and suddenly I’m sixteen. The pure innocence and mockingbird chant vanish with the flying of counted minutes. Numbers killed the children survivor of a conflagration. Numbers were my happiness’ death.

    Candles and flames arise from twenty-four individual flowering cakes, standing for the twenty-four people who have remained by my side during the sixteen years of my existence. Twenty-four being the year in which I’ll drift away and replace their emptiness with mourning. Time runs out next to you, the flame runs out; my hopes are extinguished. A bittersweet feeling makes its way into my stomach, numbers will peel you away from me.

  All these scenes once so pure were poisoned by numerals.