The Mathematics of Disappearing

We measure the distance between a man and his name,
Count all the years that disappear into time,
And call the sum of our mistakes a life,
As though the answer waits somewhere in the end,
As though the world were built to make us whole,
As though a fraction cannot contain a universe.

A single thought can hold a universe,
Yet fail to recognise its owner's name.
We spend our youth preparing for the end,
And leave our present borrowing from time.
We search for something that will make us whole,
Then wonder why we cannot call it life.

Perhaps the problem was never life,
But all the definitions of a universe
That never asked us to be whole.
We inherited the numbers, not the name,
The borrowed certainty of measured time,
And mistook the calculation for the end.

But what if there is no final end?
What if the unfinished parts of life
Are not the errors we must solve with time?
What if the smallest thing in the universe
Is not a particle, but a name
That someone speaks and makes us whole?

I used to think that being whole
Meant never having to begin again,
Never having to question my own name,
Never losing an argument with life.
But even stars are incomplete universes,
Still burning through the arithmetic of time.

So let the numbers disagree with time.
Let no conclusion claim to make us whole.
There is no proof required of life,
No perfect answer waiting at the end.
Even the silence of the universe
Has more than one way to say a name.

And when the universe forgets my name,
Perhaps the question will outlive its time:
Was I ever meant to be whole,
Or was I always more than the sum of my life?