Falling In Love Is The Real Chaos Theory

Your partner is reading dystopian fiction. 

You ask, ‘What’s the world like in there?’

He looks up. ‘I’m still at the beginning’,

he says, showing you the page number,

smudged from his finger’s firm pressure 

on the paper’s corner, a stain you commit

to memory. We all remember our firsts:

The flutter of butterflies in the stomach,

triggered by the light brush of a hand, 

or a smile. Prayer before apocalypse.  

You commit Yrsa Daley-Ward’s words

to memory: ‘Love is mostly ill-advised 

but always brave.’ Your partner is now

reading you. The sea swirls in his eyes.

You remember the night you met him.

Eyes like a waterbed, a lucid dream.

‘A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo 

and a tornado occurs in Tennessee.’

You whisper this like an old scripture

weaved into your soul. Chaos theory. 

Falling in love is the real chaos theory,

the butterfly effect we can all attest to.

‘We are still at the beginning’, he says.

Just like the novel. It is too early to tell

which horn the devil will reveal first,

which one of you is cursed to remain

staring at a stain on the corner of a page,

forlorn, forgotten, remembering tonight.