The derivative of e to the x is always e to the x. Imagine being that stable, 
sure of your own identity. If you derived me, you would find a pigtailed girl 
bent over the table, struggling to rationalize. My family fractioned. I only call 
my dad for help on calculus homework. I last hugged him when I first learned 
long division. Slap the label “100% genuine nerd” on him like his favorite beer. 
Nerds, like the number e, unexplainably occur in nature. E like energy, 
or electricity from lightning, or the mathematical constant used to calculate 
the half-life of radioactive elements. Lately, I am volatile. They still 
teach his procedure at the high school he graduated from at sixteen. 
He never questions the formula before him. Follows exact directions: 
solves for x, skips town like his dad did. On an xy-axis, he is my origin, 
my point zero, but there are four quadrants and all of infinity to explore,
        and here is my mom with dumplings, dough wrapped around filling with the precision 
       of parentheses, her open arms that hold me and say, you cannot be contained.