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.

I must have woken up at least a dozen times,
those instances layered with our goodbyes,
as I dreamt about them at least eight more times
but as soon as you left I fell into the deepest slumber in the past few weeks
maybe not as sound as in your arms but
better than that night I spent contemplating the weight of the world on the frame
I wished I could call tiny
I dreamt about a girl, who
would spend subway rides observing people and writing their stories,
there was that subservient-looking office worker in a chiffon dress and white patent heels,
who she imagined to be returning home to a middle-aged insurance agent and a single child
on some days when, her skirt kept riding up or,
she felt her top stretched too tight over her abdomen,
the girl would take the middle seat
the only one that wouldn't allow her the sight of her reflection
on other days, she'd stand
her crooked frame leaning against the glass panel;
the only thing separating her from an absolute stranger,
it made her think about how that stranger could be;
her future boss, her arch enemy, a shoulder to cry on
one Saturday evening when love decides to let you down and familiarity settles into
an unmistakable fog in the air
This girl I dreamt about,
was as much me as I was her.