Poem in the Higgs Field by Kirsten Shu-ying Chen

February 2021

I sit on a blue couch suddenly certain of the space between radios passing. 
The tilt of the glass. The wading—how I’m of course like the fish knowing nothing but water. 
But I am late to work (all that molasses). So I scribble a few notes and look to the door. 
Doorways, as it turns out, have a way of making you 
forget. Then remember. You just have to keep walking through them. And knowledge is best 
recalled in context. But if I know I’m never really anywhere, does the theory still hold?  
My own mind will purge before the pen even hits.
It’s why I keep it in my hand and stay very, very still.  If we’ve learned one thing:
It’s that movement + mass ruins everything. If I didn’t have this frame, I could float around freely 
at light speed. But the body wails us back—with its elaborate need for space and attention. I pivot. 
Having gone nowhere, I am winded, left only with still 
images of an idea, watercolors wedged between. They arrange around me in a burst. 
There is nothing to hold and less to describe. No one really knows how to get by:
Is the trick to measure, steady, endure? Is the trick to fall out of focus?