16/365 To Form a Bond

Ask a chemistry teacher
about electrons
and she will tell you a love story
about states of excitement
attractions so intensely held
they will remain, forever,
encircling the sole object of their afinity
infinitely close
but never quite touching

She will tell you about searching,
the frustration of quantum leaps
of needles and haystacks,
knowing with increasing certainty
how rapidly they move
is maddening,
making it all that more impossible
to find them.

She will tell you about bonding,
beyond the mere notion
that opposites attract.
There are as many nuanced ways
for atoms to be held together
as there are ways to love,
each uniquely serving
its purpose.

Ionic Bonds
When particles, like you, in ways
in their very nature
are as different as can be
they can become charged,
positive and negative
(and around each other they tend to)
There is a need to be met,
and orbital unfulfilled on one hand
and an equal need to give on the other.

They say these bonds are the strongest.
There is no theft of electrons here.
Only a willingness to give,
to selflessly empty the outer shell,
will knit you two together so tightly.
But if this is the only way you love,
like salt,
rigid and crystalline,
it is a challenge not to dissolve
when the rain comes.

Metallic Bonds
Effortless and fluid
the bonds that seal metal to metal,
seamless as any alloy
are stronger, like steel,
than the sum of their parts,
blended and solid.
They say after a while
you will look more and more
like one another.

Covalent Bonds
When atoms come together,
organic and raw, and
not yet complete on their own,
they will bring their electrons
put everything they have in one cloud
on one table
and say, "this is ours now"
not mine, not yours
but fluidly enshrouding this union of two.
Joys and burdens,
shouldered by both,
fills outer shells of contentment.
When the bond is nonpolar,
the sharing is equal,
but it is not always this way.
By necessity, there are times
when the weighty finger of fortune
lays heavy on the balance,
one side is always more positive than the other.
Remember
the afinity of charges.
Cling tighter.
Let the cloud storm around you
embrace the imbalance.
If the bond is formed properly,
this is not greed.
This is interdependence.
This is strength.
This is why the bond was formed from the outset.

Hydrogen
These bonds are the new ones,
formed out of the ones which first wove you together.
They are peripheral,
between the two of you
and those you encounter together
created by the very inner strength
that binds you as a couple
New forces,
tender and stabilizing,
let you draw others closer
build structure, family,
community, home.
These are the molecules that will crystallize around you
They say there is security in numbers.
This is more than speculation,
more than hypothesis.
This is theory.
This is practically law.