Primes

 

A prime number is a whole number that is only divisible by itself and one.

Thus three is a prime number but nine is not, as it is divisible by three.

 

As a young man growing up in Queens, New York,

I would stay in my room for hours with the door closed,

sitting huddled at my desk,

studying number theory.

I loved the primes—2, 3, 5, 7, 11,

and so on to infinity—

each composed only of itself,

pure, unique, alone.

 

G. H. Hardy, the number theorist

whose textbook I devoured then, had no regrets

that his math was seen as useless by the world.

He relished its apparent lack of real-world application,

never suspecting that his work would lead

to codes, cryptography—the art of keeping secrets

or at least trying to.

 

My room also housed a bed,

and though later beds were occupied

by lovers, girlfriends, wives,

bodies and caresses, liquors and perfumes,

in this one I slept alone,

untouched and untouchable.

 

Once my father entered my perimeter.

We should talk, he said, about the birds and bees,

or do you already know, he said, about the birds and bees?

I lied and said I knew,

and he, relieved, pretended to believe me.

We never did have that talk

about the birds and bees.

 

One afternoon, when my father was at work,

I rummaged through his desk

looking for a pen. I found one and it read, I quote,

“Meet your friends at Molly’s: Casino and whorehouse.”

I never asked, he never told,

but he clearly must have known

about the birds and bees.

 

I regret, now, never asking more,

never knowing more,

in the interest of preserving

our shameful sham tranquility,

our premature invention

of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

 

We were, I see so clearly looking back,

a family of primes, each of us alone

unfathomable, incommunicado:

2, 3, 5, 7, 11—and so on to infinity.

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Carl Auerbach lives in New York City, where he has a private practice of psychotherapy. He has had three poems and a short story nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Euphony, The Green Hills, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Louisville Review, among others.