Nerdy Love Letter

In a closed system, mass and energy are neither created nor destroyed. Which means that if we went back in time, all the way to the shuddering birth of the Universe, we would find somewhere in that glorious mystery all the pieces that make up you and I. It means that if, on a cold winter's night, I reach for you and put my ear to you, like a child listening for the ocean in the pearly folds of a conch shell, I might hear echoes of the universe, the hum of cosmic radiation, the roar of solar fusion, the collisions of moons and meteoroids. It means that if I were to travel back in time without you, perhaps a hundred years, perhaps a thousand, and lay myself below a cherry tree, close my eyes, and stretch my senses, I could find you there around me, in the living sponge of the soil, the waxy blades of grass, in the atmospheric nitrogen, and I would know that you were with me.

--Jan 29 2021