The poem is still available on the magazine’s website. There is also an audio version available there.
The Primer is a new magazine & EIC Nicole has been so very communicative & attentive with us as she’s put the issue together. I appreciate all the hard work she & her team have put into this issue, it has turned out beyond beautiful & I’m so honored for this little poem to be among the featured works.
I wrote “Imagine that we’re watching a documentary & you argue” while watching a documentary about particle accelerators. The documentary included a little segue questioning the importance of beauty & art alongside science & I felt the hyper-romantic part of my brain kick on.
Imagine that we’re watching a documentary & you argue
that there is no mathematical expression
of beauty, & I will try. I will say there are numbers
which fit elegantly inside each other, inside
themselves. & I will describe your eyes as dark
universes, the home that nurtures every story
I’d ever want to tell. Your eyes house undiscovered
planets & stars so bright I can feel their heat
as I stand nearby. & I know there is an elegant way
to describe it all, there is a language, there is
a hexadecimal code that knows the color
of each planet’s home soil. There is a degree
to your smile & an oblivious angle to your gaze
which I have learned to avoid, to remain
in this state of both existing & not. I suppose
there are a few pixels in your phone
that could solve for obvious, reveal fractions
of my heart but you are written
into the code of the universe. Red bird,
sunshine, nonexistence; uncertainty
knows a state of both love & not,
& still there is no place where
I’m not always & already yours.