The Zero Point
A poem by Julia R. DeStefano
“Physicists Richard Feynman and John Wheeler calculated the zero-point radiation of the vacuum to be an order of magnitude greater than nuclear energy, with a single light bulb containing enough energy to boil all the world’s oceans…. Zero-point energy could power the planet with the strength of multiple suns” (source: Wikipedia).
The Zero Point
“What could be better
than the Red Sox and a redhead?”
he asked me coyly.
Frangelico lips to meet mine
in love not witchcraft.
A palm on my back to quiet my pain
when the waves get too rough,
and I can no longer command them.
Fingertips speaking truths
we’d been longing to hear
where they burned my body
on a pyre of hatred and fear.
And I wish I could understand
this void when he goes,
for it is bigger than me.
Bigger than the ocean
I beg him to take me to
with energy enough to boil.
Though the liquor goes down smooth,
like him.
Ancient people worried
the sun wouldn’t come back after an eclipse*,
and it’d be all moon to contend with.
Yeah, it’s like that.
But curses have power only
when you believe in them,
and all stories begin
with once upon a time.
Because he and I’s souls are like magnets.
Our heat, a thousand suns.
Unexplainably tied to each other
eons before the first hello.
© Julia R. DeStefano
*“For some cultures, the eclipse was an act of creation: the sun and moon were coupling, and would create more stars…. The English word eclipse comes from the Greek ἔκλειψις, ekleípō: disappearance, abandonment. A solar eclipse is the moment in which the sun disappears” (source: “When the dragon ate the sun: how ancient peoples interpreted solar eclipses”).
