C10H12N2O

     “Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

                                                                                   – Albert Einstein

     Have you ever spilled your guts to a perfect stranger? That’s chemistry.

     Have you ever been drawn to someone for inexplicable reasons—and it was nothing they could have said or done? That’s chemistry.

     Sometimes you meet someone and you just know. Sometimes you meet somebody and the pieces start to fall together in a way you never could have forseen. Sometimes you meet somebody and they see right through all your walls and mirrors and illusions that you put up to deflect others, and they read you like an open book. That’s chemistry.

     And like all chemistry, this chemistry has consequences—mostly in the form of reactions. As humans, we behave no differently than atoms at the lowest level—we are completely powerless against attraction beyond our control.

     Except this chemistry is unique because there are no laws that govern it. It moves freely; dances of its own accord; it is unbounded by the gravity and the science that defines worldly existence. It picks and chooses its time and place with no regard for the past; it is undefined—it is perhaps the greatest mystery of our own souls.

crazier things have happened

I think first years fall in love so easily because they are perfectly, uniquely set up to do so. Everyone (sort of) went off to university and fell in love (or something vaguely resembling it), and I think I can see why. They move to a new city where they barely know anyone, and they fall in love with nearly perfect strangers and big illusions because they need something to stabilize themselves. They're uniquely vulnerable, and they search and yearn for something to be attached to when everything else has changed. But maybe that's the most innocent kind of love of all; they want nothing more than love itself, which just so happens manifest itself in mystery and charm; wonder and stability; in first times and strangers who just so happen to be in the right place at the right time.

And I speak as if I'm detached, but I'm not. Not in the least. I might still be in the same city, but everything has changed. I am one of them, and that's how I know.

To each other, we are perfect strangers.
To each other, we are perfect.

The Haiku Series, Vol. 4

French Vanilla

Early morning fog

But don't you think I missed

The sparkle in your eyes

Majesty

Watching the sunset

Painted in the autumn leaves

We walk a little slower

This September

Never by chance

We are nearly perfect strangers

Awakening love

Insomnia For Lovers

Meet me at midnight

Underneath the winter moon

We'll chase the night into day

Happy Birthday

Waiting up all night

As the city lights dim

I blow the candles out

Dear Calculus,

Searching all the Earth

3.14159

You are my answer

Something About the Way You Look at Me

Untold stories in your eyes

Tell me that this will be

The last first kiss