The Arithmetic of Loss
by Femi Bakare
My grandmother kept her pills in a Lipton tea tin, the red one with faded yellow letters. Every morning at six: shake, count, swallow. The mathematics of staying alive.
I learned to count this way, her white tablets scattered across the kitchen table like fallen stars. One for the heart that skips. Two for the bones that bend. Three for the mind that forgets my name but remembers the recipe for pounded yam.
She would let me arrange them into patterns: circles within circles, straight lines that led nowhere, small pyramids that crumbled at a breath. "Mathematics," she would say, "is just another word for faith."
Years later, sitting in my pharmacology class, the professor droned about half-lives and bioavailability. I thought of my grandmother's hands, how they shook as she measured out hope in 5-milligram doses, how she paused before the last pill, the tiny blue one, and whispered something I couldn't hear.
The day she died, I found seventeen pill bottles in her kitchen drawer. Some full, some empty, all of them labeled with dates that stretched back three years. I realized then that she had been practicing for her own absence, portioning out time in careful increments.
What did you whisper to the blue pills, Grandma?
I poured them all into the old Lipton tin. They sounded like rain against metal, like prayers hitting heaven's roof. The mathematics suddenly made sense: she wasn't counting pills. She was counting days. Each tablet was a sunrise she might see, each swallow, an argument with eternity.
I keep the tin on my kitchen table now. Sometimes I put loose change in it, sometimes paper clips. The rattle has changed, but the counting continues. One for the rent that's due. Two for the dreams deferred. Three for the phone calls I should have made.
This morning I found myself whispering to the coins: let me be worthy of her mathematics, let me multiply what she gave, let me never forget that love is the only currency. The tin sits empty now. The counting will continue.
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BIO
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Femi Bakare is a young writer in their early twenties with a passion for films, filmmaking, and artistic expression. They write poetry and explore various forms of creative writing, drawn to the intersections between visual and literary storytelling. Femi has published poetry with Free the Verse and is emerging as a distinctive voice in contemporary literature. Their work often examines themes of identity, loss, and human connection through both written word and visual narrative. When not writing, Femi can be found studying cinema, experimenting with different storytelling mediums, and discovering new ways to blend their love of film with literary craft.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram: @femiwallace_​​
X (Twitter): @femibakare_
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