The Scientist in Love

I am a man who thinks in very logical and reason-based terms, which is why for me science is a discipline in which I feel supremely comfortable. But as a consequence of this manner of thinking I continually struggle to understand or cope with characteristically irrational concepts such as love. This composition is about that very struggle.

"These are the better of days,

when it is science that keeps me up at night

and not love,"

he said to himself as he lay there in the dark.

The world for him was to be ordered and understood,

delineated neatly like the structure of snowflakes.

But neatly his struggle with love

certainly was not.

He could not measure the arcs and vectors

along which his emotions travelled when he thought

of Her.

The thunder, the pain, the longing,

the rain that kept falling—

in his heart there was chaos and unpredictability,

things he could not fathom in his usual way.

What rules were he to follow

in the game of love?

Where there rules even at all?

Follow one set

and he would be faced

with another.

No rules, it seemed, no order in this plane.

Why was it that he found himself

calm and collected

when tackling ideas and churning theory,

but

unsettled, unhinged and unable

to think when delving into his own heart?

And why was it that

She,

of all the people he knew, held such power over him?

He could not measure Her, could not deduce or infer

what manner of system She was.

She was a model who's every parameter just made his chest

...ache.

The logic of the universe was lost to him when his eyes

locked with Hers.

M.M. — 27-Mar-2016