Arithmophobia (Fear of Numbers)

ARITHMOPHOBIA
(Fear of Numbers)

By

Richard Vance


He sits up back and watches numbers
Being written on the board;
Just white on black;
The teacher scribbles them so fast.
In reality he knows,
Not one of them can cause him any harm,
But all at once it surely starts:
The trembling hands,
The sweaty palms,
The rapid breath,
A heart that’s racing in his chest;
He finds it difficult to breath,
And although he knows he’s tried his best
He can not stop the ticking clock,
Or all the numbers waging war,
Assaulting him,
Advancing forth,
They steal their way into his head, his heart;
It doesn’t stop;
And then the noise gets louder still,
As they begin to add and multiply their lot,
Like marbles being counted in the game,
Just One by one,
Round and round,
The tiny fractions and equations come,
All squared and cubed, divided out,
Arrive at Pi,
The logarithms hidden in the back;
The numbers come,
The numbers go,
but he just can’t control the flow,
And in a flash insanity does peak,
His vision dims,
The sounds around begin to slip away,
Another chance to walk out of the dream has passed,
Right now it’s just not meant to be,
Arithmophobia is complete.