Poem: "Why I Love Being Married to a Chemist", by Barbara Crooker

Found via Sarah Reisman: 

Why I Love Being Married to a Chemist

by Barbara Crooker 

Because he can still cause a reaction in me

when he talks about SN2 displacements,

amines and esters looking for receptor sites

at the base of their ketones. Because he lugs

home serious tomes like The Journal of the American

Chemical Society or The Proceedings of the Society

of the Plastics Industry, the opposite of the slim volumes

of poetry with colorful covers that fill my bookshelves.

Because once, years ago, on a Saturday before our

raucous son rang in the dawn, he was just

standing there in the bathroom, out of the shower.

I said Honey, what’s wrong? and he said Oh,

I was just thinking about a molecule. 

Because he taught me about sublimation, how

a solid, like ice, can change straight to a gas

without becoming liquid first. Because even

after all this time together, he can still

make me melt.

“Why I Love Being Married to a Chemist” by Barbara Crooker from her book Les Fauves. © C & R Press, 2017. Reprinted with her permission.