in your love until it can be measured, quantitatively,
for example in diamonds, rainfall, or cortisol levels
collected over a five year period. The control group
is people who have never been loved. They walk among us -
owning pencils, twirling the ends of their hair
round their loveless fingers. How can I tell if, really,
you belong to their alarming number? You may
have misunderstood every love song.
You may be crying at the wrong segments of my life.
You could be concocted entirely of man-made materials:
plastics, apologies, genocides. Man-made
concoctions do not love. Ergo love is not made, only felt,
like the weather. But the weather stopped
loving us a lifetime ago (according to the data).
Mary Paterson is a writer and curator based in London. Her poetry has been published by Poetry Magazine, 3am Magazine, & Cutbow Quarterly. Mary is the co-founder of ‘Something Other’: a platform for experimental writing and performance, running since 2014.