live your life

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell them that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever. And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.

when you find out your chart is compatible with a celeb you like but you can’t do anything about it

maybe we’re tired of tragedy maybe the world said: welcome home, it’ll be a beautiful ride. maybe the world lied, maybe the lifelines on your palms are no more than some ancient tragedy dragging its teeth on your skin like an animal that refuses to die no matter how many times you shoot it. maybe i’m applying lipstick in the front seat of my car and the leather smells like my friend rushing out to throw up. we are all rushing out to throw up because we live in a time of cataclysm, every day might be a new catastrophe. nuclear apocalypse is the new black and we are already putting shotguns in the trunks of our cars. you blow a breath of smoke and i want to know why everyone tells me that cigarettes are bad for my health when the sky over my hometown is no longer the blue my grandmother remembers, and why you think that i am destroying myself when the world is being destroyed and you just throw the leaflets away. we are not trying to kill ourselves here, we were just born exhausted, and i don’t see people in the streets, i see moving muscles and bones. we all want enough breathing room but our lungs would break apart if we got oxygen. there are people who have never even seen the stars and now you tell me that elon musk wants to launch us into space. to do what? to destroy, which is the ancient tragedy, which is the only thing we know how to do right. i weep for the stars and for the galaxies and for some passengers two centuries into the future, the child with curly hair pressing her nose to the shuttle window as Earth burns burns burns, the only legacy we ever left.