I am sharing this poem, Numbers. It was written by RJ Walker in honor of his friend Brock, who died waiting for a liver transplant.

Numbers
RJ Walker

I used to find math so boring
Numbers just seemed so cold
So impersonal
Like talking to a blank wall

“So what’s it like being a wall?”
“…” Is all the wall replies

I was failing math class so I had to do something
So I started giving the numbers faces
And names
As if they were characters I could relate to

The number 0, for example,
Is appropriately named Nothing

The number 1,991 is named Beginning
Because that was the year I was born
And he used to be friends with 2,009, who I named Graduation
But they haven’t spoken in a while
So now they’re just facebook friends

The number 12, named Wage,
Is a broken lover
With 450, named Rent.
It’s kind of a love/hate thing.

Then there is the large and lonely 2,468,435
I’ve named him Tragedy
He is a remorseful glutton
His dark cloak grows larger and larger each year
He is the tombstone prophecy
He is the epitaph statistic
He is the number of Americans that die every year
And he is built out of his children

One of them is 750, Painful Patience.
He is the number of patients in pain
Waiting for an organ transplant in Utah

He is the prodigal husband of Pretty Corpse
The number 30
She is the percentage of people who did not check “yes”
Together, they have a son
18, named Failure
I’ve met him.
He’s the number of people who die of organ failure
Per day
Including my friend, Brock.

Failure always has this distraught look of hope on his face
As if he thinks his run-out father will come back home any day now

Then there is the number 1
I’ve named him Almost
Because that’s the number of people
That could have saved Brock’s life.

Tags: Brock, donate life, donor registry, Intermountain Donor Services, liver, liver recipient, liver transplant, love, organ, organ donation, organ donor, transplant, utah, yes utah, yesutah

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Myths and Misconceptions, Questions, Volunteers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.