Zero
He came close to me,
whispered softly and said,
“Do you know your worth?”
I looked at him quietly,
thinking maybe, for once,
he would say something beautiful about me.
But then he smiled and said,
“You are the zero in my life.
Nothing.
A blank line
on the pages of my story.
I don’t think you are worthy of anything.”
And strangely,
his words did not hurt me.
Maybe because I realized—
he was blind.
I wanted to ask him,
“Do you even know
what a zero means?”
Without zero,
numbers never grow.
The world stays trapped at nine.
Without zero,
time loses its meaning—
there would be no clocks,
no counting of days and nights,
no dreams measured,
no futures built.
If I am zero,
then I am necessary.
I am the silence
that gives value to every number beside me.
Ask the billionaire
who spends sleepless nights
trying to add one more zero
to his wealth.
Ask the little child
who smiles while writing
an extra zero in his pocket money.
Ask the man drowning in debt
who prays every day
to erase just one zero
from what he owes.
I am not empty.
I am not meaningless.
My value begins
where others fail to see it.
In the end,
I let him walk away,
thinking he was simply too naïve
to understand my existence.
Because some people
can count numbers—
but still never learn
the value of zero.
By~jia