The Molecular Level

With crutches and ropes, 

her brothers helped her 

scale the steeple of 

Saint-Pierre-de-Montrouge. 

Swinging past the clock, 

like from flying trapeze, 

this nameless woman 

reached the cross 

and rang the lone bell. 

Around the corner, 

on Rue Sophie-Germain, 

named for that jilted 

mathematician, 

you sat drinking your coffee, 

drinking in the atmosphere, 

replying to emails, 

checking your account. 

I watched her swing 

from the steeple as you 

studied Archimedes, 

Fermat’s Last Theorem, 

the royalist Cauchy. 

I wasted time staring at her 

flight, and you read 

Recherches sur la Theorie des Surfaces 

Elastiques.

I glanced back. 

Our eyes met again as 

if never before. 

The chemical bond strengthened 

and true. 

A heteronuclear connection. 

Atom upon atom, 

we exist in the same moment. 

We exist in the same 

infinite life. 

Neither created nor 

destroyed, 

our love is elastic. 

We learn of the melting 

Blackfoot Glacier 

and Schrodinger’s equation. 

The magnetics of our 

molecular bond attracting us 

again… again.

Suddenly, the ropes break, 

the crutches fall 

to the asphalt below. 

The nameless woman 

Lands with motionless 

broken neck. 

Inconnue on the police report, 

like Sophie Germain on 

The Eiffel Tower. 

Le Figaro

 suggested her right arm 

was replaced by the scales 

and toes of a chicken, 

shrunken in her sleeve, 

reaching for her crutch. 

It was never proven 

nor was that on the official 

report. 

You laughed it off on the 

surface and on 

the molecular level.