Postscient

It didn't shift in an instant, not like the tungsten glows, then extinguishes. Falling out of love is not just the opposite of falling in. The flash of recognition, the nights spent dreaming with wide-open, starry eyes. The element of surprise. "Falling out" is slow, sneaky and wily, and you often don't know you've fallen until you feel the thud. Then you understand the gravity of your situation.

So, in just that insidious way, I have fallen out of love. My beau leaves me cold, bored and unsatisfied. I work with his friends, and that's awkward. In fact, they're not just friends, these people. They are all in love with him, too. He has so many lovers, and just as many haters, but few ex-lovers. These people won't understand. Not at all. I'll lose that crowd in the divorce.

How will I replace him? A ridiculous question, when the real question is how to leave. I want us to stay friends. I'll still read his letters, some of them. I can't forget him; he's all around me. I'll always remember when he showed me Fibonacci's number. What is more delicious than the feel of Avogadro against my molars? He gave me that first - I was only sixteen. The voltage! The resistance! Ohm my God. I had all of that with him, and mho.

I can't even say it was a childish passion, this parabolic rise and fall, this astronomical, meteoric flight through variables and constants. Let x= whatever it wants to be - he was my x-axis and I never asked y. You can't calculate the factors that made me love him. The rithm, the log of my obsession was natural, both real and irrational. It was a sine, not a tangent. I didn't need a proof.

I'm no fool. I know I can't live without him. Neither can you. I just know I can't be his mistress any longer. I must unwind myself from the double helix of his devotees. The bonds have loosened. The resonance is gone. I have to leave his house to be real, but he has always paid my bills. What new lover will take me in when I have divorced Science?