Physics

Underneath the balustrade 
Decked out in a purple dress
I am doling out my patience 
From the marble floor

The chandeliers wax vibrant 
Like a perfect gibbous 
Moon over the terse horizon 
Bursting in erratic whimpers

Lying here, I exercise my vision 
Memories you slid between 
The morning papers 
And the nighttime of our universe 

Some of us are artists;
Others, engineers who comprehend 
Disorder made of entropy 
Yet not of human minds

Dreaming of the golden lanterns
In the Mandarin Oriental 
I escort you to the engineering lab
These toys you manufacture,
Old machines that roar and simper,
Race around a spiral mountain 
And come back down again 

If a polymer is just a set of bonds 
Then why are bonds so meaningless to you 

I have a photograph in my possession 
We are on the opera terrace 
Peering through the curtains of the night;
Pressed against your custom-tailored suit 
I am in a scarlet dress 
Ten nights ago a rogue soprano
Jumped from that same balcony 

The other day you grew insufferable 
Expounding the hypocrisy of aging 
The voice of your procession shrills 
While mine, just as a bee that pollinates a flower, 
Grows cumbersome and weak 

I glowered in a surly orange hue 
Growing, in your engineering t-shirt,
Bothered and disturbed

A woman aging is a cauchemar
Yet when a sherry ages 
It grows rich and smooth 
Just as the men who find this magic opportune 
As they fabricate the universe 

Racing on a mountain 
On a road alongside marshy trees 
The cars move faster on the TV screen 
Rushing past the blind spots in my vision 

Under you I have grown sexually impure 
These polymers they burn for you 

Through this expanse of eighteen months 
The caterwauling Dutchman rumbles on his ship
And I keep checking back for you 
And so you could have danced 
A more appropriate burlesque

Smudging out the dewdrops on the windowpane 
I stitch up these ripped-up fantasies
In old vignettes of taffeta and ballroom floors
We are waltzing slow and close 
Amongst the candlelit cornets
Memory’s deceptive montage wanes

We reconcile the difference on our clocks 

In a midnight floor-length dress
Whose sequins glister like anemic stars 
I burn down the polymers you gave me
Dazing on a couch

These chandeliers have always flickered

If you can learn to play a riff on the piano 
Though you were never musically inclined
Then perhaps I’ll whistle ditties of my youth
Though with every day I grow away from you 

I am perching on the roof 
Jessica bereft of her Lorenzo 
Apprehending music in the moonbeams 
And if I would have kept the teddy bear 
You manufactured in my likeness 
In the engineering lab 
I could have preserved 
The only vestige of our truth

I cannot incorporate such blasphemous revisions
In the storybook I have made out to you 

And if, before the sunset of our promises, 
You ever wish to dance 
Bring me to a lighter opera 
Design a car that takes us
Through impossible black holes
Maybe then I’ll reassess my principles—

This is the hypocrisy of aging!