Four

You were so cute
in four hundred words
in smiles aimed squarely
off-center
as if there was something
someone
pressing gently on the frame

Four hundred
became four thousand
with hands held
in the space
we failed to fill
in the absence
of the truth

I wanted to stop counting
to stop believing
there was a finite number
we could exchange
but when four became forty
our shared language
had run out