Cheryl Dumesnil

Poetry

Cheryl Dumesnil’s books include the poetry collections Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes and In Praise of Falling (University of Pittsburgh Press); a memoir, Love Song for Baby X (Ig Publishing); and the anthologies We Got This: Solo Mom Stories of Grit, Heart, and Humor (SheWrites Press) and Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (Warner Books). A freelance writer, editor, and writing coach, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two children and her wife, Sarah. www.cheryldumesnil.com

A Dissertation on Quantum Entanglement as a Love Song

I whispered your name in a napkin, crumpled it into my palm and opened an empty hand. I poured our story in a coffee mug and buried it in the weeds behind the park bench. A love so secret I refused to tell it even to myself. I dreamed we kissed in the cafeteria line while the steward looked away. I sang you loudly in an empty car, mountain storm slicking the roads. Stay home, the ocean, who never lies, told me, so I did. Runner, I imagined my words becoming the pulse in your ears. I dreamed your shoes beneath my bed. Your wet paint tenderness. Your shimmer like water held at the brink of over-spilling the cup. The sun, who is always right, aimed her compass point at my chest and said, Wait, you'll be amazed. Years gone, your scent woven in the cables of a thrift shop cardigan. I wished you well under the changing colors of a sourwood tree— your words arrived not like a dam burst, more like a rhythm I'd never noticed, pulsing in my throat.

“ Years ago, I sat at my kitchen table with my friend Julia Rymer, a visual artist, having an awed discussion about quantum entanglement theory. This theory posits that particles, once they become ‘entangled,’ are forever measurable as a unit. Even with vast space and time between them, they remain somehow connected, such that when something happens to one particle, the same thing appears to happen to its counterpart. As Julia said, ‘one spins, the other spins.’ At the time, Julia was expressing this theory through a series of paintings. Since then, quantum entanglement has threaded through many of my poems. (Artistic entanglement theory, in action.) In this poem, I explore how this scientific theory parallels the plot of a great love story, an idea that brings me a ridiculous amount of joy. I wrote this poem for my wife, my favorite and forever entangled particle, Sarah. ”

Listen: