Schrödinger’s Soup

I was at a diner once, just north of town, which had a soup of the day being heated in an old, black kettle, circa The Dark Ages. The sign on the pot read ‘Pizza Soup’, which struck me as a strange sensation in my mouth. Does it come in a bread bowl? Is someone out there redefining the Italian classic masquerading as an American classic, putting a modern twist on our preconceived notions of what dinner is, even though I’m here for breakfast?

Of course love is a fickle thing, as they say, just like the label on the kettle which read ‘Chicken Noodle Soup’ just ten minutes later. Someone has now decided to test my curiosity by serendipitously altering whatever is in the kettle. Is chicken noodle pizza something I can buy now? Can I buy into this strange concept just like I bought into love recently? When we mix two things that shouldn’t come together, like particles in the Hadron collider, what are we inciting?

I must admit that soup and love, in my professional opinion, have nothing to do with each other, just like the woman I poured my heart out to. We’re a lot alike, her and I, except for the fact that she doesn’t share how I feel. I imagine she would rather have chicken noodle soup where I would venture to try the pizza soup. We both enjoy bowls of boiling liquid, we just prefer different fillings.

And here we are, in the cylindrical, mechanical tube we call life, being tossed around and around like particles shooting through space. Every now and then, we collide against one another, smashing our heads together and arguing over what to do and where to go, as if those decisions really even matter at all. If science had a cure for this kind of heartache, I would have bought stock with my first paycheck.

I told her I loved her once, but not in those exact words, and now I’m wishing, like a cat in a box with a vial of poison, I would’ve left the mystery behind a closed door.