"have a nice flight" by Haley King
Brandy Whitlock | Sermon on Chemistry
“This means that we have here an entirely separate kind of chemistry for which the
current tool...is not the balance, and which we might well call the chemistry of the
imponderable.”
—Marie Curie
Love is violent. Love is cheap. Love does not
get bored. It does not bleed. It is not quiet.
Love has illusions. Love is work. Love builds
and dismantles. Love cleanses and corrupts.
It won’t behave. Love is devious. Love grapples
and stumbles; it kicks and chokes. Love holds
ludicrous grudges. Love dissolves. Love cannot
trust, and it cannot be trusted. Love is unrivaled.
Love is inept. Love is not just. It is profoundly
disproportionate. Observable, love is exceedingly
common, but not repeatable, never reproducible.
Love is senseless, and it is insidious. We need to
love more than we need to be loved. Love is no
antidote. Love is a compulsion. Love is a construct.
Not once have we had the luxury to love without
fearing its loss. Love coerces. Love compounds
and contorts. It extracts and assays, saturates
and absorbs. Love collapses. Love is amoral. Love
is transformative. Love is grubby and rank, organic
and explosive. It is vulgar and libertine. Love is most
unbecoming. To love is to be exposed and unraveled
and remade. Love is eerie, prickly. Love is a flashing
red light coming around a dark corner. Love’s a slow
learner and a sore loser. Love is woefully incapable
of preparing us for separations, for our unremitting
and crippling grief. Love shows little remorse. Love is
fractious. Love is formulaic. Love lies, and love leaves.
Love is a con. Love is a thief. Love is why we forego
what we want here and now for some fantasized
future—perhaps next year, tomorrow, maybe later
today—that we may not live to see, that we have
every reason to suspect we will not live to see.
So we must go, again, and love unfathomably.
current tool...is not the balance, and which we might well call the chemistry of the
imponderable.”
—Marie Curie
Love is violent. Love is cheap. Love does not
get bored. It does not bleed. It is not quiet.
Love has illusions. Love is work. Love builds
and dismantles. Love cleanses and corrupts.
It won’t behave. Love is devious. Love grapples
and stumbles; it kicks and chokes. Love holds
ludicrous grudges. Love dissolves. Love cannot
trust, and it cannot be trusted. Love is unrivaled.
Love is inept. Love is not just. It is profoundly
disproportionate. Observable, love is exceedingly
common, but not repeatable, never reproducible.
Love is senseless, and it is insidious. We need to
love more than we need to be loved. Love is no
antidote. Love is a compulsion. Love is a construct.
Not once have we had the luxury to love without
fearing its loss. Love coerces. Love compounds
and contorts. It extracts and assays, saturates
and absorbs. Love collapses. Love is amoral. Love
is transformative. Love is grubby and rank, organic
and explosive. It is vulgar and libertine. Love is most
unbecoming. To love is to be exposed and unraveled
and remade. Love is eerie, prickly. Love is a flashing
red light coming around a dark corner. Love’s a slow
learner and a sore loser. Love is woefully incapable
of preparing us for separations, for our unremitting
and crippling grief. Love shows little remorse. Love is
fractious. Love is formulaic. Love lies, and love leaves.
Love is a con. Love is a thief. Love is why we forego
what we want here and now for some fantasized
future—perhaps next year, tomorrow, maybe later
today—that we may not live to see, that we have
every reason to suspect we will not live to see.
So we must go, again, and love unfathomably.
Brandy Whitlock is a librarian and educator living in Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines like New Orleans Review, Calyx, Salt Hill, The Baltimore Review, The Tusculum Review, and Denver Quarterly.
Haley King, also known by their artist name GRVNGE LESTAT, is a Chicago based LGBTQ+ mixed media artist who primary uses illustrative methods to construct their body of work and combines that with digitally manipulating their own photography to achieve an effort to create their artistic world that houses themes of hauntingly provoking atmospheres.
Instagram @grvnge.lestat
Tik tok @grungelestat
Instagram @grvnge.lestat
Tik tok @grungelestat
