Vignettes of a Love for Science by Lilla Bozek

My god is bitter and gritty.
To pray is to chew the glittering dust of Leviathan and spit out soot.
Embracing the detachment,

There is no grace in my religion.

But her:

Harp hands plucking soft melody into the neurons of prey, bloody tissue under her nails from raising scars
on minds. Eyes to turned away so violently, looking for guidance in the other direction. Carbon and other
chemicals leach from her tear ducts. A cruel seductress. A garden of incidental thought. A siren song
played a meter too long. Oh, fair angel! How little I mean in the wake of your Adonis.

There is no grace in my religion.

But him:

Soft sloping elegance: a summer breeze nestling in the crook of his neck, tendons rifling through
memories of lattice-laced leaves crossing a cloudless sky. The morning grass, wet with dew, cuts the jut of
his nose bridge and the blossoms of rosy pink-flesh cushioning his marble-sharp bone: sharp as the glass
in his eyes and rusty metal rot in his hands, robust modernity masking the vintage boyish pretty. The kind
of pretty that makes me want to scream from the mountain tops “Oh god, why must men grow old.”

There is no grace in my religion.

But me:

Alone.
Again.

The whimsy machinations of my idle mind tell-tale the tall tales of my bleeding heart, but now comfort is
a fool’s confession and I,

A man of science and worldly endeavors,
Sans-cardiac-sleeves rolled up past my elbows,

Have no time for foolery.

And what matter is comfort when my god is indifferent.