tempest-at-noon:

Today, I am a physicist. My voice travels at three hundred and forty three meters per second, the speed of sound, and its frequency is ultrasonic. You cannot hear it, but it is there, just like everything on either side of the rainbow, because any physicist knows that even if you see chasmic voids of black or hear nothing but the rustling of your own skin, there is plenty before your eyes, humming right above your eardrum. My steps travel at three hundred million meters per second, the speed of light, and my marrow is radioactive, caressed by gamma rays that are bending my knees faster than I’ve ever been able to run, because as the atmosphere warns, I am not wanted here. My wavelengths are small because my life, like your life, is fleeting and ephemeral. But I harbor not the ostentation of the stars- feigning posthumous immortality- nor the legends of fossilized bones that hide in cavernous rock, waiting, just waiting for the inevitable epoch in which their remains become priceless works of art. Unfortunately, I am still only human in the sense that my body will never be studied and awed at through such fervent, fascinated eyes.

However, I am a physicist, which makes me not-human, anymore. I cannot write about love, because it does not exist as a writer may sense it. It is not an undying sensation, but, rather simply, a mixture of lustful doses of oxytocin and testosterone and estrogen, taken in shot glasses that are never given enough time to be rinsed out. They mix and stain hands and leave marks to remind you of what had happened last night. You aren’t in love. You’re only a science experiment, misplaced in some motel bedroom somewhere. Your hearts do not synchronize their beats, together; you each have four chambers, all of which synchronize to beat with each other, and none else, because you are not attached to any limbs other than your own. You are uncivil and ignorant and know no better, because you are experimental creatures, and I, as your physicist, am not at the liberty to disclose the facts. The truth. But that’s all you are. That’s all. 

I am a physicist and do not see beauty in people. I do not believe in beauty, as I do not believe in religion, because both are too subjective and transcendent to prove. My feet are dug into the soil and Newton has the numbers to explain why. My arms can reach up, defying gravity, because I have the energy to waste if I so choose. My body is alive, and thus I always have energy. That is how my eyes see it, because I am a physicist and my eyes are nothing more than layers of muscles, tissues, and nerves. My irises do not tinge your vision azure blue when it’s just you and I, alone, and your palms are pressed into my neck. They are merely dyed with melanin, and not enough, in my opinion. My pupils do not hold depth- they are not windows with blinds through which you can peer into. Rather, they are holes. Empty, empty holes, through which you can stick your finger into- through which I’d like to stick my finger into, sometimes. Because I am a physicist and find no beauty in color. I am like the ancestral mother whose sole responsibility was to keep the family alive while my hunter-gatherer of a partner saw with green vision to prey on herbal dinners. I watched vigilantly for illness, pulsing blood in flushed skin. These are the same red eyes through which doctors see rose cheeks. I, like the mother, like the doctor, do not see skin blushing angels. I see reflection. I see disease. I see blood. I see death. Your white cotton is not innocent, pure, chaste; it is a mirror, reflecting color, and it does not mean that you are young, or cherubic, or a “good girl.” It only means your skin is kept cool. Your black lace is not seductive, alluring, or “wrong in the best way possible.” It absorbs light and only means you’re going to sweat, and burn. But not from a lover. Only from the heat. You’re falling victim to the sun, because the pompous thing dictates our lives, our sleeping patterns, and unless you want to love what can kill you, I’d suggest wearing white from now on.

This was not meant to be written well, because I am not a writer. I am a physicist and I want to be as straightforward with my theses as possible. I am here to state that Yes, we were right, or No, we were not right, in a numerical language that curves in ways letters never will. I will speak in a foreign vernacular so you cannot understand me, because I am a physicist and would rather study than simply watch. I am a physicist because I am attracted to black and white: I want to prove, or I want to disprove. And whether or not I’m following the Laws correctly, I am constantly solving or un-solving, because I am a physicist and like the edges of a black hole, I have a hunger I can never seem to fully sate. With the appetite of our expanding universe, I will ruminate with numbers at my fingertips until I have the answer to every question asked, and those not even thought about being asked yet.

But, foremost, I am a physicist because I have proof- with the the low, patient frequencies of rouge-tongued stars- that space and time are stretching, unfurling outwards, and that no matter what I do today, time is indifferent and will still be progressing, tomorrow. 

If I were anything but a physicist, I would not have these even seconds to have faith in, and because I’m still half-human, I still need something  to believe.