Music for two, music with you

Primo and secondo:
four hands, one piano.
Fingers glide across black
and white 
slide across left
and right.
A cascade of notes
echoes without bounds, floats
like suspended
sound.
Two hands play the melody,
two hands play the beat,
two hands
brush accidentally —
then the two harmonies meet.

When physics failed me

The professor is talking about forces
on the chalkboard, but I am tired of hearing the same things,
deriving the same formulas, over and over again.

Inertia is the tendency for an object to keep moving
at the same velocity unless acted upon
by an outside force, he reminds us.

I want to ask him what makes a person stay sad,
and what outside force can stop the sadness,
but I don’t raise my hand.

If you choose a specific centripetal acceleration,
you can essentially simulate gravity,
he goes on enthusiastically.

I want to ask him what kind of acceleration
can make a depressed person feel weightless,
but I don’t raise my hand.

I get angrier and angrier the more I learn,
and the more I learn the less I care,
and the less I care the more I hate the people who do.

The equations in my notes are insufferably smug.
“We can’t explain the world to you,” they seem to be saying.
But why not, you arrogant assholes? Why not?

I used to wonder what matter is made of,
but now I just wonder what’s the matter with me.

Don't trust the beautiful things

An angry swarm of butterflies swirls in the pit
of my stomach. I can feel them making their way up
into my lungs, their gentle wings making precise
paper cuts inside me—

all over—
every second.

Sometimes I get lonely and I whisper to them.
Oh little butterflies, what have I done?

But they just cling to my heart,
which beats furiously,
unable to shake them off.

Sometimes they drive me crazy and
I want to cry and drown them.

I want the salt of my tears
to dry their wings until they are crippled and broken
and dead. I want to scream so shrilly that I scare them
out of my body.

I want these stupid, beautiful things
to just get the fuck out of me, away from me, forever—

Oh you bullshit butterflies,
I’ll miss you when you’re dead.