In the Quiet of the Atom

In the hush between two heartbeats,

where silence drips from the stars like dew,

I have walked barefoot

through the corridors of thought,

and found molecules whispering

secrets older than flame.

I speak with hydrogen

in the early morning mist,

its breath light as the wind

that bends the sleeping wheat.

The sun, a golden nucleus,

splits the chill of dawn

into fragments of warmth

and possibility.

Each drop of rain is a cathedral

of symmetry and purpose,

carving rivers in time,

etching verses on the bones of mountains

that remember the sea.

A leaf unfurls—

green equation of light and life—

photosynthetic prophecy

birthed in stillness.

We are born in the throat of stars,

cooked in furnaces of fusion,

atoms scattered like prayers

over the void.

And yet, somehow,

these particles

find their way to hands,

to eyes that reflect

not just the world,

but the longing to understand it.

I have seen a flame hold memory.

A Bunsen burner’s blue core

sings of order and energy.

In a beaker, copper turns to coral,

silver dreams in nitrates,

and the glass weeps condensation

like it remembers a sky

it once held.

Chemistry is poetry written in the tongue of electrons.

Reactions are romances—

unseen until they spark.

Some burn out too soon.

Some endure.

I once believed only in equations.

Now I find that love, too,

balances in strange proportions—

sometimes endothermic,

sometimes consuming all.

Time flows differently in the lab.

Outside, the world spins stories—

traffic, laughter, mourning doves—

but in here, only minutes and molarity,

only titrations and the quiet thrill

of precision.

Outside the lab,

I walk the long road back,

past rivers blooming with plastic flowers,

past children who ask

why the moon follows them home.

And I wonder if the sky ever tires

of watching us forget it.

I plant a seed and name it "Tomorrow."

It sleeps beneath the soil

as roots grow dreams,

as worms chart the underworld

in patient spirals.

A tree remembers every storm.

Its scars are not regrets

but records,

rings inked in cellulose

that say:

"I was broken,

but I grew again."

What is memory,

but carbon organized

to resist forgetting?

In sleep,

I drift to oceans untouched by anchors,

where whales carry songs

older than words.

Even here,

in the belly of night,

the moon distills light

like a chemist’s hand.

Dreams are reactions unmeasured—

impossible to replicate,

but no less real.

I dream of skies

that don’t divide us.

Of water that heals

more than it takes.

Of a world where science

walks hand in hand

with wonder.

Once, I held a dragonfly

in trembling palms.

Its wings were glass diagrams,

its body a filament of copper and code.

It looked at me with eyes

like microscopes,

and then it flew,

leaving only wind

and reverence.

Loneliness is the space between two atoms.

Yet even they,

given energy,

will bond.

Even they

yearn to share electrons.

Even they

reach.

I’ve watched people

pass each other

like neutrons—

so full of charge,

but silent.

And I’ve seen eyes

that light up

when truth arrives—

those eureka sparks

that no candle can match.

In every question is a universe,

in every answer,

the beginning of another.

Science does not end;

it circles,

spirals,

like galaxies

in love with infinity.

When I am old,

may I sit beneath

a sky dark enough

to see all the stars

I missed.

Let me hold a beaker

one last time—

just to feel

that glass humility,

that fragile vessel

of possibility.

Let me teach a child

how to mix truth and wonder

until they bubble

with awe.

Let them spill it—

yes, let them spill

hope on the floor

of tomorrow.

Let them know

that mistakes

are just reactions

we haven’t written down yet.

I leave this world

in particles,

in notebooks,

in echoes.

Not all of me

was meant to last—

but some of me

was built to burn

bright,

blue,

brief.

And in that briefness—

in that radiant hush—

perhaps,

a poem remains.