Let's start with you

Let's start with you,
I hear you say,
as you hold back, breathing long.  So, I prepare,
                                                                                                                       pick up pencil,
and the words become damned digits, tricky little bastards, I can't get a hold of.
I'm staring into your laughter, hearing calculus, doing math, where I should be writing rhythm.
I'm reckoning my life in terms of loss and gain,
but it won't add
up.
I'm reworking each number, line by line, going half
         mad, trying
                 to figure out where I
                                     went wrong.
I am turning, examining angles of myth, bends of mystery, holding on and giving up.
       This
isn't easy.
     To what small or large degree have the mistakes of my past brought me, in mind,
                                                   down to the boundary where the indigo pulls, closer to you.  Maybe, you've got
              the brains - or the ways, can do with negatives what I do with the upside of words.
                         I start with you, because that's where it started,
but maybe if I move the placement.....and you draft dispersal,
we'll fit in the end.
I am rounding up, mixing roots,
        real,
imaginary,
    and then impossible, and
                  maybe, I'm tallying what I should not be, maybe, I'm instead,
                                                          subtracting increase.
                                                                          It's a
                                                               toss up, this pending
                                                                        pain, I know.
Torment of dilemma, or maybe it's simple
                                                                          as pie, you and I.
                                                                                I think what it all comes down to is the sound of your
voice,
so I say, Let's start with you;
          you tell me how one and one makes two.