Quantum

1.
You get in the car and I know
you have something to tell me,
not because I see the unspoken
pooling in the curve of your eye,
but because I feel you not speaking.

2.
Afterwards we lie in bed, your head
cradled beneath my clavicle; you say,
What did you just think about?
Why?
The rhythm of your heartbeat changed.
I reach to pull you closer, but closer
no longer translates in our new language.

3.
We both understand
that the blue herons
around my lake and your dock
can hear me thinking.

Two thousand miles between
me and your downward spiral,
weeks before I’ll see you again
when a heron lands
two feet away from you,
spanning the dark distance for us.

4.
In the quantum world,
scientists perform experiments
on the crystalline structure of water:
shouting at one container for a month,
saying thank you, I love you to another,
ignoring the third.
Under the microscope, changed expressions—
exposure to negative thoughts forms
dull, incomplete, asymmetrical patterns;
exposure to loving words creates
brilliant, complex, snowflake patterns.

5.
2014 was the southeast’s second
wettest year since record-keeping began.
In California they continue to have
the worst drought in modern history;
I am saturated; you are flammable.

M.S. Lyle hails from NJ and currently writes from Roswell, GA, a revived milltown hugging her beloved Chattahoochee River north of Atlanta. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. You can find some of her work at Postcard Poems and Prose, Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Write Room and upcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review. She’s currently furiously editing her first full-length poetry manuscript and working on a collection of travel essays. Oh, and daydreaming. Above all else, daydreaming—a skill she gives high regard to not only as a poet, but as a sentient being in general.