You roamed in like a chuckling bear into my house of beakers, graduated cylinders, round bottom flasks, you asked to borrow an Erlenmeyer, here you go, I said, thought you were just a clumsy animal, afraid you'd break something of mine, pushed you out of the lab and you came back bearing M&M's in a petri dish, half of them a mess of Blue No. 2, I shook my head but had to smile, thought you had a big heart, we shared laughter and confidence over seafood pasta and glasses of Chenin Blanc after work, you clasped my hand so I didn't trip on the sidewalk when I bumped into you in Central Square, told me how your wife would rather sleep in your children's bed rather than in your arms, made me a pretend friend with empathic ears, our lunch breaks our secret solace, how I stood on your side, how I raged against your wife, said she was a permafrost of dry ice, made her into a witch casting slow doses of cyanide, we flashed like activated carbon with air, we dissolved in blurs of endorphins, our bodies, molecules of shivery bonds transcended into vapors of bliss until we condensed into cold reality, your wife like me like you the same composition of heart, flesh, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, collarbone, calcium, phosphorus, femur, sulfur, humerus and scapula, electrons circling nuclei, laws of gravitational physics neither you nor I could break, like water like oil, must separate.