The Nerd That Will Never Know

You sit across from me in chemistry.

Chemistry, that’s where love happens, right?

Where you find that maybe molecular orbitals

Aren’t as boring as you thought,

And ionic and covalent

Aren’t the only ways something can bond…

Or at least that’s what you hope.

Won’t you please look up and smile at me?

I always see you working

Your face gets so intense, your mind flies away

To where I cannot reach you

I feel like a puppy following you around

bombarding you with study questions

if only to hear well reasoned answers tumble from your lips.

And I am fascinated

Because how can you stay focused on those lewis dot structures,

ligands, isomers,

sp2 and sp3, PV=nRT,

Crystal Field Theory,

And NOT... notice me?

I would love to discuss the difference of

Tetrahedral and bi-pyramidial over dinner

If only you’d be willing

You amaze me, I love to watch

as you spend your spare time

tutoring other students.

Quenching the questions

Drawing out network solids

Explaining equations, and finding X.

Formulas fall out of your mouth,

As if that’s their only purpose.

You don’t get paid

You’re not doing it for the credit

You do it because you want to

No other reason required

Chemistry is your lover

You never wish for a mistress

There is no Bathsheba to sway you to temptation

While you get As, I get Cs

You sail these choppy waters as a captain on a ship

But I am holding on to a piece of driftwood

Hoping to survive until morning

I envy your intelligence, yet that also draws me to you

Like a siren singing my deepest desires

To understand that which I have no knowledge

Why do you adore it so much

That you’d rather tutor for free

Than spend time with me?

Notice that I crimped my hair.

It pooffed out all weird

Not at all like I was expecting

But, maybe,

now that my hair took up more volume in the room

You’d have to see I’m here too

Yet I am resigned to watch you from afar

for you are never within my grasp

You are a magnet, and I am plastic

Wishing to be a piece of iron or nickel

But you will never come my way

and so I leave you,

to your Chemistry, Math,

your passions, your love

I fade away like liquid nitrogen

a puff of smoke

lingering only for a moment

before dissapearing from your sight

forever