What are you up to, Victor?

I’m writing a poem, Eloise,
something about love.

His felt-tip pen was hovering
over a page of crossings out,
where white-out streaks had
turned to snow capped ridges.

So much for having writ moves on.

I hope it’s not about me,
you know that I don’t exist.

Eloise was a quantum physicist,
she insisted on precision.

You’re a patchwork quilt of
strangers sown together, I
admit, still that’s as real as
anybody gets.

Greater than a sum of parts
perhaps, but please don’t
mention the bolts that hold
my neck in place.

She returned to her computers,
and with Grecian symbols shining
in her glasses, started typing,
a keyboard for each hand.

A quantum wormhole from
Orion’s Belt had opened in the
upper atmosphere.  The aliens
were on their way, and she’d advise
the military on how to close the
breach.

Except that now her Sunday thoughts
were drifting, from Heisenberg
to hyacinths,  from enigmatic
quantum tangles to a strangely
poetic human condition, that
wasn’t a mystery at all.

I’ve been thinking, Victor.
I know your poem’s important,
but there’s a fair on in Geneva Park.
Why don’t the two of us go?
We can watch the sunset from
the Ferris wheel.

sources
Quotation from Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám (1859); Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel about Victor Frankenstein and his creation; Werner Heisenberg, best known for his uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.

artwork
No-one really knows what wormholes look like. You can wait patiently in your garden to find out, but those holes will be made by earthworms, and space worms are different.

Here’s a gallery of some more visual ideas for wormholes. Admittedly wormhole with artificial sweetener might be a little far-fetched.