The Particle Physicist's Wife

The world that absorbed
much of his consciousness
was far beyond her
and always had been.

A world and a language
that meant nothing
to her whatsoever.

Muons, neutrinos,
quantum fields,
Hilbert spaces,
the elusive quark
with its fingerprint
on near everything.

Incomprehensible as
a convoluted forest
delineating a reality
she never chose to visit.

Yet when it came to the
world of the everyday,
the language of weather
and gossip, of politics and
literature, music and art
and morality, the language
of friends and lovers,
they always spoke the same.

Appeared in Analog