800

A tree does not count its rings.

A river does not remember how many times

it has touched this stone.

*

An old man on a bench

watches the pigeons.

He does not think: eighty years.

He thinks: the bread is gone.

*

Light from a star

traveled four years

to land in your eye

at the very moment when you

were thinking of something else.

*

A number is an agreement.

We agreed to count,

and now it seems to us

that time exists.

*

A child asks:

—How much is "a lot"?

And no one knows the answer,

because the question is honest.

*

Eight hundred—

just three digits.

Or it is the morning

when you woke up

and thought:

I wonder what today will bring.

This is not about me. It is about numbers, time, and how we assign meaning to what is, in itself, just a sequence.

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