To Schrodinger’s Cat, From Which He Got the Idea.

I have never seen you, so for this moment, you both do and don’t exist. You are both small and not small. You are winding around the table leg as he writes to Einstein. You are not bothering him. Yes, you are.

Brian Robert Marshall [CC BY-SA 2.0
 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons

You were left in his flat one Thursday afternoon when she had enough. Or he, when he had enough. Whoever Schrodinger's lover was left you there. Enough is enough. I can’t wait forever, the lover thinks.

Schrodinger is at the desk, bent low over the letter. He is trying to fathom all the implications of the theory, the power of the observer to influence, to determine even, that which is observed. He looks up: a portrait of his great grandfather on the wall. A photograph of his sister in Italy last year. Tea cooling on the table. The cake beside it.  No one else is here.

Could he go back two days, sit at his desk, look up again and see his lover turning the corner down the hall, hear a sigh? He could get up and follow. He could offer a cup of tea. He could reach through all the matter that connects them until his hand touches a shoulder.

But he lives forever in the moment before any decision. He is asking about the math of it, how the numbers add up to all options, how the math impacts the outcome. He doesn’t know yet that Einstein doesn’t know the math, though he knows it’s there and knows he’s right. It’s like asking the architect a question for the carpenter. But Schrodinger hasn’t opened that letter yet.

Erwin Schrodinger

You jump up on the table. On his lap. On the chair beside him. You swat at his pen or a flash of light and he is annoyed. Not just with you but with all the doing. Cars outside the window. The children returning from school.

He tries not to see or hear any of it. He closes his eyes. He can feel his own heartbeat. Beat, then silence. Beat. Silence.