Calibrating/Leaping

We were both born into wallpaper
that refused to repeat.

He: briefly the brightest thing in the room,
not meant to last the evening.

She: kept an alembic for grief,
distilled the air into bitterness,
bottled the residue.

At night, I followed the maps drawn in moth dust.
You charted the ceiling cracks
for signs of collapse.

I mistook lullabies for launch codes.
You mistrusted songs
that didn’t come with schematics.

I stopped asking why the wind turned.
Let the thread tangle.
Stood still long enough to see
no straight line out.

You –
trained in the language of systems –
pressed for symmetry,
wanted the pattern to hold.

Still, we breathed the same asbestos truth:
love arrived dressed as weather,
and left the windows open.

You built equations to keep the flood at bay.
I let it in,
called it a nocturne played in reverse,
and drowned once or twice
for good measure.

You see –
the wound was a house with slanted floors,
every corridor already curved.
I danced downhill.
You tried to level the furniture.

We each carry these crystal orbs now,
new worlds, unknowing,
spinning across the ruins.

Yours wrapped in caution,
mine already humming.

I listen for music.
You scan for fault lines.

You want yours
to leave no sound when it falls,
to trace the hush
as it arranges itself.

I want mine
to sing as it shatters,
to read
what the shards choose to write.

Neither of us gets to choose.

This is where the pattern should resolve.
It doesn’t.

There’s no map for this.
Only time, space
and

$$
R_{\mu \nu} - \frac{1}{2} R g_{\mu \nu} + \Lambda g_{\mu \nu} = \frac{8\pi G}{c^4} T_{\mu \nu}
$$