Used to be a teacher, a math educator,
numbers his endless stream
watering endless minds.

And on the side he was a philosopher,
a waterfall of ideas,
a flow of inspiration to everlasting adolescence.

And that was his legacy.

Now, he sits in the humming fluorescence
of a vast discount warehouse,
his sole task to count the shoppers.

Not their purchases, but their souls.

The automatic door whispers open and shut,
a mechanical lung.
Each person a number
incrementing his silent, internal tally.

He sees the equations of their weariness
in the slump of their shoulders,
the calculus of want in their grasping hands.

The numbers are no longer abstract,
but a hyper-real catalogue of despair.
His philosophy has condensed into a single,
repeating thought.

Every life reduces to a final sum,
and his own is approaching a negative integer
under sterile,
unblinking lights.