Crumbly Percents
After kindergarten
You had gradually discovered
The code of the alphabet
Translated from inky-written faces:
A is for grinning face
B is for smiley face
C is for neutral face
D is for sad face
F is for none.
So far all you had deciphered were As.
And from mastery,
You were introduced to decoding
Percents
And whenever your score was lower than
One hundred
You were less than the celestial
One hundred.
The A is still there
Seven or eight slices of percentage
Were already eaten
And the warlock sitting next to you
Had just received an entire pie.
The schoolmates wonder
How you and a few others
Had mined so many As.
Every day they see platinum
Where your temples should be.
They think you are born a cartographer.
Yet the clouds
Will never let you read Fate’s map.
They are not aware
How similar your wings are
To their sails.
They do not know
That they can learn, too,
From reading a new joke
On a wooden popsicle stick.
They can hardly fathom
That you love eating eight of them
In one sitting.
There are days
When you shovel up stones
And shower your echoing crevasses
To the brim
Where the rest of the percents
Should have been
And someone will always ask you,
“Why are you so smart?”
I still sit speechless in my desk.
How can they question a magpie’s ability
To sing in the storm
When they as vessels
Can sail
In the quaking sea?
There is no “why.”
But there is struggle
And lasting ability.
I have been educated
On how to use a cipher with my wings
I have never learned
That when some glasses are half full
It is okay to end with merely glasses.
My scores do not have to be as seamless
As nature’s feathers.
Our eggs have not broken
Just so we can live
As smoothly as they had used to be.
Our trees have not sacrificed their branches
Just so our ships can be expected to heave burden
And yet suddenly sprout flowers.
No wind blows in the same axis
It would not have been as refreshing
If they all propelled up.
And then clouds would just blow away,
Away from guarding every map
And thus your treasure hunt to completion
Will not have been completed
By you.
Our prime may not be constant
Yet our souls are all capable
Of soaring.
Our best has always been the treasure chest
Digits or letters
Do not have the nobility
To say so.
Even in preparatory,
Regression can be best …
Because
Everyone
Deserves
To live
With a grinning face.
This poem is about:
My country