science-fact

For 2 years, I had memorized the principle of superposition. That when two waves intersect in a medium, the resultant amplitude would be the vector sum of the individual amplitudes at that point. With that I learnt that there would be days where the lightness of your being would pile high on my shoulders, and yet a certain buoyancy could be felt in my footsteps. A kiss would threaten to lift me off the ground. Days where the two of us coalesced.

A constructive interference. 

Lessons on neutrality taught me that there would be days where we’d liken our relationship; the mutual pairing we called love, to a barren ocean, not a single ship or light in sight to guide us home.  We’d walk, the distance between our elbows growing with our weariness. I’d open my mouth to speak, only for a weak sigh to escape before I purse it shut. A dark fringe in our interference pattern. 
A destructive interference.

I was pushed onto a track, they called it the road to success. Perhaps they used the name of science in vain, because it legitimized this form of bribery, and switched pennies with university places. So while I stood there, mixing chemicals and anticipating precipitation, I thought about how if I could somehow process the look on your face; as you walked towards me that twelfth night on Emerald Hill and captured my face in your hands, into photographic evidence would they believe I discovered love? Because, you can’t time the exact moment you brush fingers with somebody and realize the faceless person your dreams wrap around was them. I could describe the spike in temperature when you’re mere inches away as an exothermic reaction, but I could never soak up the angry words you sputter at me with litmus paper and call them acidic.

I don’t need a margin before I begin writing the steps to exploring every crevice your body promises. I don’t need evidence of your affliction marring my neck and hips to make me feel wanted. I don’t need the toxic mix of chemicals to make me crave you, and perhaps someday try to forget you. I don’t need an explanation for how the planets behind your closed lids came to be. I want to draw the tiny feathers on your lips, colour in the veins running through your wrists and paint your sunkissed locks of brown, but I was never taught how to. I want to write about you, down to the littlest detail in flowery language and see if it’d score me an A. But I couldn’t. And there I was, just a science kid, and so were you. And just like that,

we superposed.