Shapes of the Past.
Numbers of the Present
Variables of the Future.

Shapes are different for every little hand drawing them,
every grown-up touching them.
Sometimes they miss a point,
only later to remember and disappoint,
in finding it too late to mend,
that broken shape.

Numbers are the same every time you see them,
a constant in problems and mazes of wits.
with one careless mistake,
it changes, never to be fixed again,
because you wrote in pen,
with the confidence of a youth,
the bane and talent of adolesence.

Variables change everytime you try to simplify them.
Yet they never change their appearance,
staying the same throughout.
Until that moment,
reaching the last step,
they just become additional numbers,
that might be the right or wrong solution,
later confirmed with substitution.

Lilly Rose

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/math-of-life/