Science is the understanding that nothing is lost,
But everything winds down.

There is no beauty in science, some said, no art.
I refused: Some, God, silent doctor waiting at the door-
I refuse.

There is only this tragic struggle:
Your heart, carrying all the implications
Of a watch left in desert, must eventually fail to keep time.
I would know why the stitches that wound our heels,
Blossoms of Achilles, are the heart’s most desperate gestures.

I want to look at your heart, hearts.
Aspiring a capella,
The down-singing choir in my hand, your heart reveals.

First, I must understand the laws of motion,
Wave-forms, cryptic anatomy of silence and not-silence,
Only in your mind, your body is a law unto itself.

First, the Archaea, frustrating enigma that never speaks.
“Where did you come from?” I asked.  
You smiled, as if I were asking
Who of us is more than water?
Why aren’t the stars alive?

Selfishly, our endosymbiosis called its questions as demands.
How can this work?
You look like someone I knew before…
I want.
You cannot leave.

I must submit to examination.
The machine will tell us if my heart speaks in murmurs,
But not if I am heavier than a feather,
Not if we did or didn’t know what we were doing.
You invited me in, and it was raining so I stayed.

We violated the lens, spoke too longingly of light.
You saw the defined spaces between the foam.
In a tangle of bed linens, I dreamed of pulsing Farandolae,
Paired for synapsis, migrating to the metaphase plate,
Ripped from sound’s embrace by their reluctant roots.


*I will be vaccinated against harm, but not shadows, not time.