When I met you,
everything insignificant
Sang!

Soap bubbles
blew me melodies,

Nail clippers
Tapped to the tune,

The leaky faucet
Splashed a symphony!

When I met you
For the last time,
I took a wrench to the neck
Of the racketing faucet.

Retrospectively, it was always a nuisance.

The night I got stuck climbing up a tree
You couldn't stop laughing from the forest floor
And seven feet below you looked like the size of a baby badger;
A baby badger who was now in charge of saving me from my stupidity.

You called the fire department
And said a human confused herself for a cat
So was stuck up in a tree and therefore
In need of a local newspaper headline rescue.

With the height advantage
I saw three firetrucks rushing down the road
Epileptic lights bouncing off the empty pavement
And yelled down to the baby badger
"You made a scene for no reason!"
Only to have the baby badger yell back up
"You ARE the ******* reason!"
And I swear I almost fell from the topmost branching
Laughing with my whole body in motion.

Three minutes later I was surrounded by an unnecessary amount of red
"What the hell is going on?" questioned the Fire Chief
Amidst all the official uniforms and bustling bodies
All you could think to say
"Sorry officer, we binge drank the moonlight."

I know I'll never have Alzheimer's
Because the look that overtook the Fire Chief's face
       Cracked his professional facade
       Transforming it into an all too knowing smile
Will forever be etched on the inside of my eyelids
Embarrassment and hilarity relived every blink of an eye.

Orange rinds and coffee grinds
Take me back to easy Sunday afternoons
Playing chess with former churchgoers in your tiny café.

I met a man who didn't believe in God
But instead put his faith into the Queen
"She protects" he'd say after ousting another piece of mine
"He forgets" he'd mumble as an afterthought, directed at no one.

But as it goes one fateful day
Student surpassed teacher
And didn't think twice about killing the Queen.

As if a bomb detonated just within the cappuccino brown walls
The chessboard flung against the wall
Causalities flying in all directions
A porcelain blood bath.

He left in a hurried huff
All owl eyes all snapped in my direction
I sat frozen -- shocked.

You broke the trance
Kneeled down to pick up the fallen Queen
Placed Her Royal Majesty in my right hand
Placed a free coffee on my table.

The café resumed it's normal character
Scattered chatter and newspaper shuffling
I took a sip of the burnished brown liquid
Tasted a hint of bitter citrus
And came to conclude that there exists a distinct conflict between
Power and Empathy.

I’ve discovered the secret to life!
But, it may not be the most likable knowledge,
And, it definitely does not fall under “small-talk-poetry,”
Yet, it is known that everything-worth-knowing was once considered hideous.

What am I?
I’m human,
like you.

Like you,
I’m human,
What are we?

We are cells,
Cells made up of molecules,
Molecules made up of atoms,
Atoms made up of protons and neutrons and electrons.

Electrons…
The lightest charged particles,
Electrons…
Who weigh 1836 times less than a proton,
Electrons
Found a way to rebel.
Electrons
Repel the nucleic core.
Electrons
Push boundaries.
Electrons
Create space.

An atom is mostly empty space.

All of me is composed of atoms,
All of you is composed of atoms,
We are mostly empty space.

We are just reflections
Of this Universe
Staring back at each other.

I wrote a sonnet to the Sun
But it went up in flames.

I etched the ashes on your heart
But your cool blood froze over the remains.

Disintegrated words
Disgruntled author
Disjointed worlds.

When we found out we weren’t the Center of the Universe
It shook the core of our collective selfish selves.

We called the findings blasphemous
We charged the scientists as heretics
We realized we were less than specks of dust
But worse off because metacognition is unrelenting.

After all these years
The stars remain indifferent to our presence
But we study them all the same
Doting them like a school girl obsessing over a secret crush
Extrapolating their composition while they don’t bat an eye
Humbled at the horrific beauty:
A lonely planet orbiting all too busy universe.

Though you’re as amorphous as the smoke I puff out, you’re much more toxic and I can’t seem to exhale you out of my system as easily.

Your name gets caught in my throat.

Everytime.