Lies Your Physics Teacher Told You

Lies Your Physics Teacher Told You

I remember the day you ran up to me in the hallway after Physics and before English. Your face was flushed rose with untold stories bursting at the seams of your chapped lips, and I smiled because I loved it when you talked about the things you were excited about, and I loved you. As we speed-walked to our next classrooms you wrapped an arm around my shoulder and told me about how atoms could never touch each other. Your words leapt out of your mouth and into the air between us, bumping into each other and bonding together, and I marveled at how enthusiastic you seemed about the miracle of humanity and life and existence.       

I don’t remember many of the stories you told me about Physics, but I remember this: you said that the sensation of touch was just a perception, something that only existed in the mind, because atoms never touch but only hover side-by-side. You slid your fingers down my body and squeezed my waist, awestruck at this realization.

At the time, I didn't understand. “But I feel you,” I said, my mind struggling to wrap its wispy fingers around the concept. I put a hand on your chest and said that I was touching you and how did I know? I knew because I could feel you.

But you said no, no, no, it was all a perception, an illusion, nothing was real or solid or tangible and the world was a mess of a place that didn't care about us or anyone at all because the world was too busy being practical for such frivolousness.

A sick feeling spread through my veins but I pushed it away, shoved it back towards the dark corner where it belonged, and I kept asking questions, thinking that if the inquiries stacked up and became a towering pile, it would eventually topple and I would expose the flaws in your logic and prove that this was all nonsense, nothing more than silly theories.

“But if nothing ever touches anything else, how can anything leave a mark?” Your smile twisted into something unkind and your answer was simple: “It can’t.”

And then you kissed me at the door to my History classroom and as I watched you slink across the hall to English I touched my fingers to my lips. The taste of your cinnamon gum lingered there, and if we’d never actually touched, how could such a distinct taste linger on my skin even after you’d gone?

You may think you have science on your side, but I know you’re wrong because when you left I looked down at myself and I saw my clothes and my skin and underneath I saw my bones and you were there; you were everywhere. Your presence covered me like an old t-shirt dotted with holes but more comfortable than anything found in department stores, and you were not nothing, and I was not nothing, and I know that atoms must be capable of touching other atoms because you touched me and you hurt me and you left marks that I will never be able to erase, and maybe I don’t want to erase them because don’t you think they’re a little beautiful?

These marks are evidence of us, evidence of every time your lips pressed into my neck and your hand sweated in mine and your breath tickled my hair when you laughed. These marks are more real than your science will ever be because these marks are the result of loving and losing and loving again, and these marks are the result of living.