My son has become a string theory enthusiast,
advocate of the elegant universe where it all makes sense, even if
it is a little avant garde. As for me, I have decided to loosen up
and embrace the distinct possibility that the better part of me –
the one who smiled much more than the familiar I,
who had learned to laugh through excruciating pain
but who was not afraid to cry – lives, breathes,
thrives in the unseen world.

When I focus the wildly divergent energies
now dwelling deep in me, a portal opens. Reality expands. I can
almost touch her smile. Perhaps I bump into her every day.
I’m sure I’ve seen her in a European café, sipping a latte,
looking at you – you know, the better part of you
who believed in the better part of me and let go
to taste deeply of love, if only for a moment,
by allowing your own deep eyes to see through
a thousand eyes reflected in my soul that
would have moved mountains for only
a moment there with you.

I can never stay for long; something pulls me back
into the simpler, if far less elegant, world where the gravity
of Newtonian laws will have their way. For every action there is
an equal and opposite reaction, I remember. In my imagination,
which refuses to adhere to the strict scientific method, I am
hurtling through the wavy space-time continuum but forget
to see how far the rabbit hole goes. In the darkness
of the mind you touched with fire, I find you, or
some version of you, seeking a way out.

You are climbing then, as I am falling.
Who can say if either of us knows the other is
right there? I see you as you approach the peak
of a grand revelation. I cry at what I pray
is your joy made complete, as if I have
only just understood it: this beautiful
theory of everything.