outside the window, the snow collects where the sidewalks were
condensation makes the rare headlight sparkle and blur
and you stare through the reflection of your lab coat
in the window of the lab as your experiments hum
 
a battered notebook swaps data and verse by page
a scholar's journal from a half-invented age
a dream of science as a romantic's tool
the sterile beakers shattered by the jester's wand
a union forged in a gauge and a phrase
in the flourish of a sine wave is true and then gone
 
the way her eyes shut for a moment before she turned away
the way your phone didn't ring the rest of the day
the way the fumes unravel into the corners of the lab
the way your pencil follows the curves in the columns of figures
 
so much surrenders to the microscopes and knives
so many moments, captured from so many lives
and yet for all this desperate precision
so much still happens that nothing records
the best equations spin without input
and the best ladies still extend hands to the same lords
 
outside the window, it's a world of people and machines
a constellation less of points than in-betweens
inside this sterile refuge of science
you hide from your failures in another thousand trials
 
the notebook's open, her number on the left-hand page
a list of reasons on the right, in the graph paper's cage
you do the derivations for the hundredth time
but no formula bridges the sewn seam
no calculations yield a second chance
no substitution can turn this lab into your daydreams