Child Prodigy

All parents will say their child is a prodigy
But mine really is.
You should hear her count:
1, 2, 3, 5, 7…
No, she didn’t skip any numbers.
She just counts in prime
But gives the “1” a little too much credit.

She says “I love you, Daddy.”
When I ask her “How much?”
She sprints a tight figure-8 in reply,
Tearing infinity into the lawn.

The first clue to her talent came moments after her birth.
Just for fun, I asked her what two plus two is.
Already fluent in American Sign Language,
She told me “five,” then smiled.
I thought she was making a joke, but it was probably just gas.
This was before I knew she only counted in prime.
Turns out the math works,
For extremely large values of two.

DaVinci wrote backwards and was considered a genius.
Our child speed-reads cookbooks upside down
And writes notes with no repeating symbols
In a secret code that brings CIA cryptographers to tears
In crayon.

She gets both more adorable and naughty exponentially by the hour.
Like blooming fractals, patterns of each behavior more erratic each day.
Implementing a cost-benefit analysis of deeds
That would baffle Alan Greenspan.
She insists there’s a method to her madness.

She’s invented her own language,
Like twin-speak for an only child.
Wishing her parents could understand her ululations,
She throws yogurt at the diplomas on the office wall.
We know they embarrass her.
They’re only master’s degrees.

We’re afraid she’ll be lonely without peers.
We’ve tried play dates with the neighbors’ kids
But we feel bad when our daughter shows their child up.
The Hawkings next door say their son Stephen won’t be coming over again.
Made up some excuse about preparing for lectures in theoretical physics.
I know he retired last year.
Did they really think she wouldn’t put 2 and 2 together?
That’s the first thing she did when she was born.