A dark energy tugs
all things apart -
distance like taffy
wrapping around itself,
estranging molecules.

Lovers struggle to unite
in passion's gravity.
From our vantage
on glistening fingertips,
we spiral around their union.

No light escapes
this opaque singularity, yet
life sparks in its halo.
Birth, a primordial separation
we suffer ad infinitum

in the slow severing
of atoms. Love -
the sticky glue
evolved from cosmic push-pull.
Resistance is fertile.

"Thanks for sharing. Always like it when science stimulates creativity." - Neil deGrasse Tyson, April 17, 2009

Written as a meditation on current scientific theories of the evolution of our universe, I subsequently discovered, via the title of an episode of X-Files, that the Greek philosopher, Empedocles, believed that the elements are "eternally brought into union, and eternally parted from each other, by two divine powers, Love and Strife.¹"