scientific inquiries from my kitchen window
by Madeline Torrez
One: Geology
the dustbowl left my eyes stinging
but i dug deeper into the sandstone,
the layers of colorado rocky mountains, my home.
geology, i found, is a study of depth and metamorphosis;
i grit sand between my teeth and taste the silica—
i used to hate the beach. i skipped past it, pulled
myself as far into the water as i could; chest deep
where salt corrodes and current erodes, my back to the shore
and still, i am treading in the swells, my fingertips
swollen and pruned. gull cries are the harmony
to the waterfall cascade melody crashing
through my ribcage. scales may well erupt from my skin
before coriolis carries me back to solid ground.
i can never come back to what i left;
every snowmelt stream strips the stones further
and further, disintegrating shell after shell,
pocketing the sediment and sending it down the hill.
Two: Meteorology
can you hear the feathered air whistling over the waves?
can you feel as it floods your lungs? i scrape at the stratosphere,
cumulus snagging under my nails, sink down
to gulp oxygen and kick back up— how long can i hold it?
there’s something to be said for doing the worst part
first. as if the sky is a mirror that needs breaking.
as if i have to hold lightning in the folds of my palms.
as if it should be harder to catch snowflakes on the end of my tongue
than to swallow hailstones whole.
i am afraid of being full, of whole breaths, of excess,
of being done. i am afraid of being too much, of saying
more than is needed, of doing it all and it all not being
enough.
Three: Cosmology
aurora borealis is ions dancing on my lashes, the fumes
smell of elements forged in blacksmith skies—
did you know that we are the recycled cells of stars?
lysosomes and supernovae live in and under my skin.
the sun kisses my cheeks and my nose, binds the planets
to their orbits as it waltzes through the milky way,
and when our planet turns to look out on our sun’s siblings,
i weave them together into constellations and ecosystems.
i am small, but i am alive. even the smallest of stars have names,
even the smallest of heartbeats send sound rippling outward;
even i make dents in einstein’s tapestry.
Four: Home
so i stand here, waiting for a kettle’s whistle
as the steam collects and condenses on the cold, star-freckled window
and i am all of a sudden aware that i want to touch it— granite
and pumice and stratus and cirrus and comet and asteroid,
i want and i want and i want beyond need, i want
to drop the moon in my tea with honey, sing with the birds
about how lovely the cool night wind feels against my tired face,
i want to rip my fault lines apart, rearrange my tectonics
like furniture in my living room. i want
to abandon bacon’s methods and linnaeus’ categories.
i want to uproot. i want to collect shells in the surf, i want
fistfuls of sand and freshwater and air, heavy air, i want
enough and enough and enough—
and the kettle calls me home, moonlight bathing the counter,
tea bag lounging in its mug, tears falling from my chin to the floor.
like the cap sliding back over a telescope lens,
my throat closes around the words and they settle
into the bowl of my diaphragm, dissipating into the air,
fogging my kitchen window.