The Electro-Thermodynamics of Fluid-Phase Equilibria

was the capstone course aced by my first love 

before he got away. Is one syllable short of an orthodox 

haiku. Is the pattern recognition I lose when hovering 

satellite-height, eyes closed against the stinging wake 

that plows me into heartless failure. Fathom, 

archangels, that we exist at all—to embody a theorem 

of being, just out of reach, till you remember the burst 

of your own shivering zygote—and isn’t cellular recall

proof enough?  Unless you’ve lost too much in this 

dream-of-a-self to doubt anything that proves you’re 

here—not even your own face brushing against endless  

desertion, capitulation, and deafening surrender to the 

light. Suppose all that’s ever found of you is a humerus 

dug up in the Next Glacial Maximum: calcified actuary 

of your uncharted antediluvian fevers, last glimpse of dawn, 

preverbal calculus of what was eaten and shat, how far you

ran—nimble as the equilibrium slipping now through your 

own cupped fingers in the disappearing stream.

—Stone Canoe, #19, forthcoming 2026