Love

Love

My scientist tells me he’s got the cure.

The cure, I enquire, for what?

Love, he says, I’ve trapped it in a bottle.

It’s a hormone, washed in saline

Lying on my shelf at work.

Won’t you come and see.

I go.

--

There it is, a transparent fluid

Flask-shaped, corked, complete.

I pick it up, hold love in my hands,

And swirl the contents.

The molecules, their pious symmetry distorted

Dance in the mad eddy of my whimsical ploy.

Don’t do that! he says.

The solution will crystallize.

It’s too late.

Lovestruck, the crystals grin back at me.