alexandra weiss
people say that there’s no such thing
as touching
because nuclei repel
electricity running
interference so
the dots of us
cannot come in contact
quarantined in
isolated pockets
of void like
bubble wrap or
comic book shadows
in other words we are
mostly empty space
spat from a fog machine
only denser, people shaped
drifting and jostling
through apartment shaped fog and
held together by forces we
still don’t entirely understand
bound by probabilities and
interpretations
our nuclei repel
but our electrons could be
anywhere
bleeding through our
boundaries and
definitions
and so maybe
we can’t touch but
we can interweave
we can come close
***
Alexandra Weiss studies literature on death at UChicago. She loves Halloween and her pepper plants and has been previously published in Haggard and Halloo, Cadaverine and Another Chicago Magazine, among others.