A woman counts alone in flat 33.

We have exhausted all the usual explanations.
Too fast for days, hours, minutes, it is not time
she measures; except in her own ageing face
in the dark mirrored window.

There is no click-click of an abacus, but what abacus
could fence this in? How does her mind remain on track?
Maybe she's the world's swearbox, earning millions while
we speak carelessly on. It has become a comfort,

humming numbers. We can all detect the change
in tone when she reaches a significance. It could be
a quest for infinity, or that we have all been allocated
a number in her scheme. We do remember

a time when she wasn't counting. We do not like to think of her
in a version of hell; or ticking, unable to stop.
We sleep now but notes of panic are rising. Sometimes in my dreams
I see her counting the end rather than the beginning,

forging her own kind of immortality by denying us ours. Is this all
Death would do? I have my suspicions. I think she is obsessed
but not possessed; that she adds one onto the last onto that
and cannot stop. Even her dreams, I'm sure, count for her

when she can sleep. I bet she wakes with a new
beginning, carries on: One onto the last onto that.