Seventeen or Eighteen

Seventeen steps to the landing.

Eighteen yesterday.

Or was it seventeen then too?

I'm counting again and they're watching,

pretending not to watch,

but I feel the shift in the air

when my lips move without sound,

when I'm three steps from the top

and my fingers tick against my thigh

one two three four five—

The stairs don't change.

The stairs are the same

every time my foot lands,

but the number does,

or my memory of the number does,

or my mind does that thing

where it rewrites what I'm sure I knew.

Sixteen. Definitely sixteen.

No. Seventeen.

The landing is here,

solid wood, same as always,

but I got to it a different way

and that means something

that I can't quite name.

I turn around and go back down.

Start again.

Count slower.

Seventeen. Seventeen. Seventeen.

But next time

it will be eighteen

or fifteen

or the same terrifying blank

where the number should be.

My friend asks why.

I say I don't know.

That's the truth.

But the real truth is worse:

I'm counting because if I know the number,

if I get it right,

then maybe something

won't slip.