Letters inked on a plane of paper
squirmed like insects, mocking him,
while numbers soared, steady as cathedrals,
and crystals tolled out truths
that only he could hear.
 
He stroked them, warmed them,
conjured a quickening, his
piezoelectric pressure, vibrations
humming through quartz like shivers
through flesh.
 
When he found her, stolid and rigid
as rock, not among humans,
transmutation began in earnest—
stability to fluency to stability
elements decaying to lead
notebooks filling
with their symbols commingled,
enmeshment of structure and resonance.
 
Then half-lives, decay,
loss of electrons, collapse,
the dust of his bones.