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When everything in sight bursts with colors bright
You anticipate sensations that excite
How you shake my body like ripples through the ground
How you make my head spin as if on a merry-go-round
Shots of whiskey soaking through my skin
Was it a glimpse of heaven or one step away from sin?
You said I am worthy of celebrating what's underneath my clothes
Fantasy manifested
Hair down to my toes
Does ever it captivate your mind with memories?
How it mattered to trace my curves with ease?
It is not intoxication causing my cheeks to flush
Hard finding words to correctly describe this rush
And never got another chance to repeat our brief interaction
Well I hope I was able to reciprocate the same level of satisfaction
I did my best being a version of myself I believed you'd desire
Amidst laughter realized sparks in my center had grown into fire
And I will cherish warmth even if I never see your face again
In veins your name flowed as effortlessly as ink from my pen
Unlike you and simplicity and perfection
Scars are too deep
Too afraid of rejection
And you pointing out reasons I had to love myself
For the first time in a long while seemed to truly help
I wish you could have cradled me in that tent forever
Of course every tie must eventually sever
In your presence I no longer was haunted by ghosts from my past
Potential palpable
Hours ended too fast
When our lips met pretended it would never stop
Unable to control way my stomach flip-flopped
You had this personality that made me feel good
I showed you my favorite spots around my neighborhood
It was obvious you were handsome
To have your interior match?
Already knew better than to get too attached
That night I was happier than I'd been in quite awhile
Surprised how easily you coaxed out my smile
I loved your tattoos and intelligent brain
Plus the method you used your hands made me go insane
We took dab hits staying up most of the night
Until we fell asleep conversing still holding each other tight
For two friends who had so recently met
Admit I sure felt close
*** was like a drug and I couldn't help but crave another dose
I yearned to be better
For you tried to be enough
With so much distance between us
Quitting too tough
So continued living
Stumbling the dark
The hunger shifted to somewhere in the back of my heart
I should have realized from the beginning you were too good for me
Did
Couldn't help but long for what couldn't be
These emotions will stick with me wherever I may go
When I seem sad I look back and recall the gentle glow
I felt when you hugged me
Oh I miss your embrace
In return I hope you sometimes also miss my face
I used to have a Lite-Bright when I was a kid I ******* loved that thing
D Apr 7
Is it in your chemistry?
I wonder as I’m choking down
Tears scorching my throat like an acid rain
Hoping to bleach your name from my recesses
Built a bridge past the swap of your defenses
Tried to massage your heart without pretenses
But you burn me down.

Do you feel anything when you immolate
Everything sets you off like a hair trigger,
Bear trap my mind and clamp down while you drill deeper
Pour in your toxicity like a waste dump
And set it all on fire.
I’ll be the embers to dance at your command.
Ashes drifting like autumn leaves
Snow down in a distance like a winter dream.

Is it in our chemistry?
Do I excite you to ignition
Gods envy the way our bodies friction
But you believe the fiction,
So I’ll weep for an ending,
Burning my nerves as the acid’s etching.
Retching flames like an allergic fire eater
Your conflagration rings around me.

Are you the pallid horseman
Can I be the one to the blow the horn?
I’m weary and ready for an ending
And you burn me like white phosphorus .
Can we mix and tether,
One day coalesce
Solvent in your trepidation
Waters deeper than the ocean.

Is it in your chemistry?
Inspired by playing guitar and reading old journal entries
Faith Cubitt Apr 2
Almost....
death could not hold a torch to the word that lingers in my mind every second of every day.
we were almost something, and that almost will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I will think about how we almost kissed that night in the dark, drunk off ***** and each other.
how you almost held my hand when we were so close to each other in the back of that old chevy truck.
the almost, when you smiled at me,
when we looked at each other,
when every word held so much anticipation.
our almost will be my forever.
you are all I ever wanted my almost to be....
Lalit Kumar Mar 26
She had this habit of stealing my pens. Not in a careless way—no, she’d always take them with this playful smirk, twirling them between her fingers as if claiming them as her own.

"You have too many," she’d say, slipping one into her bag.

"And you never have one," I’d counter, watching her tuck it away like a prize.

It became our thing. Every time we met—at coffee shops, libraries, or even just in my car—she’d end up with one of my pens. And every time I pretended not to mind, but secretly, I started carrying extras. Just for her.

One evening, as she sat across from me, doodling absentmindedly on a napkin with yet another stolen pen, I asked, "Do you even use them, or do they just pile up somewhere?"

She grinned, biting her lip. "Maybe I just like taking something of yours with me."

I didn’t respond, just watched her trace circles on the napkin, my stolen pen spinning between her fingers.

Months later, we drift apart. Not suddenly—just a slow, quiet unraveling. The messages become shorter, the calls less frequent. And then, one day, there’s only silence.

One afternoon, I’m looking for something in my desk drawer when I see it—a pen. Not mine. Hers. The only one she ever left behind.

I pick it up, twirling it between my fingers the way she used to. I don’t even try to use it. I just hold it there, wondering if, somewhere in her bag, my pens still exist. If, in some quiet moment, she finds one and remembers me too.

Some people don’t take things to keep them. They take them to hold onto a feeling.

And maybe, just maybe, she held onto me too.
Charles Mar 26
diatomic love
electronic discharge

their bond is molecular
small but covalent
to them it is salient
Anais Vionet Feb 27
It’s Saturday morning at about 9am. I’m in the chemistry lab, a sterile looking room with 12 workstations that are like multi level kitchen islands with sinks and various lab gear. It’s the most fluorescently lit environment on earth and everything looks to be either white, stainless steel or glass.

I’m one of the two students in the lab this morning, so I’ve taken two stations at the far end of the room and I’m performing two experiments at once, I mean, why not get ahead?

Before I start a lab, I do a ‘cutsheet,’ It’s something I learned from my sister, Annick. The cutsheet lists every piece of equipment I’ll use (like a magnetic stirrer), every step I’ll perform (control the atmosphere), every safety measure I need to take (fume hoods), every chemical I will use (for instance alkyl halide in 0.1 concentration) and what my results should be. This is all more-or-less textbook - but I still hand-write it out myself.

It’s a quiet environment, I have my AirPods in and I’m listening to cello music - it’s relaxing. I’m performing two variations of nucleophilic substitution reactions - creating new carbon-carbon bonds. It’s Pretty standard stuff and I’m at the stage, in both experiments, where I combine reagents. When suddenly, a TA (teaching assistant) is stooping over my hunched, left shoulder.
“What do you have there?” He asked - let’s call him Lewis. I flinched. Ok, I jumped.

Lewis’ breaking the silence was sudden and intrusive. I hadn’t noticed him prowling about and for a moment I was flummoxed. I tapped my AirPods to stop the music.

This was irritating. See, anything I would say to him would sound like a child talking to an adult. He’s a doctoral student and to him what I’m doing is stupidly simple, like stacking blocks, but he’s put me in that position.

“I’m doing both variations of (problem set/homework) problem 5,” I motioned to the other station, “and I’m ready to introduce the Grignard reagent,” I couldn’t help a note of cringy defiance creeping into my tone, like a child expecting to be reprimanded.

“Are you..,” he started to say, I’m sure he didn’t mean for it to sound like an interrogation.
But I read his mind, adding, “I’m using anhydrous conditions and an ethereal solvent,” this time I said it like it should be obvious—and again I sounded childish and brittle (like an ignoramus)—to myself anyway—but I was at a loss. ‘God, I really need to be less defensive,’ I thought, mortified. I hate looking dumb.

He nodded his head, he’d been looking over my cutsheet. I gave him an upturned, sideways glance. Was he going to stand around observing or worse yet micro-manage me?
“Very good,” he pronounced, tapping my cutsheet lightly with an index finger, “carry on.”

He walked away, off to bother the other student, I hoped. Better him than me. I had work to do. I tapped my music back on, looking at my cutsheet.
Where was I?
.
.
Songs for this:
Havana by Brooklyn Duo
Carnival of the Animals: XIII. The Swan by Yo-Yo Ma & Kathryn Stott
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 02/26/25:
Ignoramus = an utterly ignorant or stupid person.

I don’t think that the way I present myself in vignettes is always flattering, but does it have to be? It’s more about stripping away fantasy to reveal the unfinished, and capturing the environment as it is—it's a ‘surveillance-style’ of framing.
Zed Feb 9
He stands upon a stalk of grain,
Rested atop a leaf,
Balanced on the branch of a tree,
Nestled on the back of an amphibian
Four who salute longevity.

She comes as a breeze,
Graceful & gently.
As like spring blossoms
She extends an offering,
Ripe & sweet
Is the fruit of her peach.

Those given to fanfare of the stork;
Who hold nature, like the cosmos, sacred
And celebrate its different changes & forms.
The way sometimes seemingly co-opted never suffers blockade.
Frank Cavalo Nov 2024
How long will this stinging take
To wholly set in and metabolise
Search amongst muddy waters
Pursue a clearer compromise
I reach for you - Sulphur -
Find myself the gilded Fool
Iron makes a likely weapon;
Pyrite a lousy tool.

Yet you appear so indifferent
Or perhaps alike, otherwise
I wouldn’t hold my breath
Believe in worthwhile sacrifice
You may find me in the bush
Aflame before the Prophet
Plunge your poker in - spread thin -
My heart if you wish to stop it

Strike a match, test my metal
Will our souls still catalyse
Was his prediction correct
What the Alchemist surmised
Or has our time ran out
Have we reached our constant yet
How dastardly - equilibrium -
Were we pernicious when we met?

Is there any merit in looking
Back on methods - revised
Is there any hope now that
The chill has metastasised?
I would contact the Smith
If he could solder back - connection -
But our glow has dwindled now,
Without it there’s no resurrection.

Though I’m overcome - ravenous -
Your appetite dissatisfies
My belly runs on empty
Without you, comes my demise
Nears a cold stove
And the Chef, grown tired.
Farewell, my loving Sulphur.

Yours Truly,
a fading Fire…
Gerry Sykes Nov 2024
One place, pressure, temperature,
The Triple Point,
aqueous molecules skip between
solid, liquid and gas
the salsa between states - identical.

No growth of  ice
water does not accumulate
nor vapour pressure rise
because the waltz, one to another, is equal.

So the three coexist suggesting stasis
while constantly exchanging substance;
a symmetry of balanced dancing stability.
Written as a meditation on the Trinity while on retreat at St Beuno's in North Wales. The triple point of a substance of the exact temperature and pressure when the solid, liquid and gas phases of a substance are in equilibrium.
Gerry Sykes Nov 2024
As the solution cools
the molecules slow their stochastic dance
and the liquid is less able
to keep the substance dissolved.

As a threshold is crossed
the power of solution fails
and atom by atom
molecule by molecule
the substance crystallizes
plane by plane
layer by layer
the form of the substance
gives rise to a growing crystal
revealing in its structure
the nature of itself.
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