Textbooks never warned us

that the algebra of love

demands solutions for sorry

written in smoke.

Men count apologies,

stack them up like coins

in empty jars,

marking decades of drought,

while women paint remorse

in breakfast served at midnight,

text messages stuffed with sweet words,

breaking through screens at 2 AM,

gestures curling smoke signals into dawn.

We learn different languages

in different schools of thought—

he carries notebooks filled with margins,

sharp equations of fault,

she carries maps of emotional topography,

every shortcut home marked in red.

They told him:

 "Words build bridges,"

 "span chasms,"

 "carry truth across troubled waters,"

 "stand firm as iron."

They taught her:

 "Actions speak volumes,"

 "silence holds power,"

 "time heals,"

 "all storms pass."

We stand in rooms full of unspoken calculations,

solving different problems

on opposite sides of the same chalkboard.

He marks evidence in bold strokes—

Exhibit A through Z

of wrongs committed against peace,

while she erases borders,

redraws boundaries,

offers touch instead of text,

skin instead of syllables.

Nobody ever taught me in school

how saying "I was wrong"

adds years to love,

or how silence

subtracts whole futures from possibility.

We're all solving for different variables

in this equation:

him for acknowledgment,

her for peace,

both of us for tomorrow.

Maybe the answer isn't in the formula at all,

but in learning to count differently—together.