On Zero

Before zero, they counted

by the weight of what was there—

grain, goat, cubit, moon.

Absence had no chair.

A thousand years of columns,

gaps inferred by where you stood.

The nothing between digits

was understood, not understood.

Then someone carved two wedges

where the emptiness should sit:

not a number yet, a gesture—

here is where we leave a slit.

The Greeks wrote O for nothing,

a depression in the sand

left behind when counters lifted—

zero as a hand's demand.

But India said: the void is real.

Sunya. Kha. The empty place

is not a gap, not a silence—

it's a number with a face.

Sifr. Zephyr. Cipher. Zero.

Every language learned its name

by tracing what the void left

on the tongue, like aftertaste of flame.

Now I write ə where e should be

and call the absence visible.

Now I build with only a's

and find the wall divisible.

Zero was the first confession

that nothing counts for something too—

that the space between the stars

is what the stars shine through.