Newton’s first law:
A body continues in motion
Or in rest
Unless acted upon by a force.

And so it goes with you:
You live for yourself,
Hurtling through time
Where the only things that matter
Are pleasure
Ambition
And greatness.
Your lone wolf days
Make for lonely nights
And inspire a burning longing,
A desperate cry:
My life should mean something!
My life needs love!

Without it, you will
Continue on,
An aimless particle,
A rogue asteroid
Waking, working, eating, sleeping,
Going through the motions,
Living as though dead.

The second law:
A body acted upon by
An outside force
Will react
According to its momentum
And conviction.

And so it goes when you find love,
When you find the one your soul needs,
Your orbit shifts.
Gravity asserts itself,
The laws of attraction are imminent.
And there is no stopping them.

You stay up all night
Whispering into phones
Sneaking away at parties
into quiet, forgotten corners.
Every moment is excitement,
Every word is something new.

There is heat - like reentry.
There is the realization
That you carry
Things from the past:
Relics, wounds, dangerous thoughts.
They could destroy your love
Before it ever becomes
Its own universe.

The third law:
When two bodies exchange forces
They are changed
Equally
Completely
Indefinitely.

So it goes as years pass:
Things are different.
Love is no longer a collection of
Whims, passion, or creation -
Your fissile material
Has lost its sear.

Yes, after years,
You now have
A language of eyes
And shoulders.
Every word and sigh
Has its own wake.

You might sit on the couch
On Saturday mornings
And never utter a single
Word.

Now, every day,
You must decide between love
And yourself:

With love,
Gravity applies:
You have weight,
You have alignment
You have a partner.

But without them
You are cursed
With long, silent days
And loud, empty nights.
Hurtling aimlessly as you once did,
A wolf among the stars.

You understand
That you don’t need
Newton to tell you
What the world is like anymore.
You don’t need physics to explain
How things work.
You don’t need
Books or blogs or advice:
You’ve lived it.

On those Saturday mornings,
Sitting in the memory of
Your first love,
In the ruins of your oldest wounds
And in the carcass of old ambitions

You know, without a shadow
That love
And gravity
Are the same thing.

And without them
You are nothing.

But with them,
You have everything.

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