Liber Plutonis - Chapter 64

Verses

Case study: P and C have been gravitationally involved for several billion years and report difficulty establishing personal space.

They are tidally locked, which means each keeps the same face toward the other. Human couples should not attempt this literally.

Their common center of mass lies outside Pluto. I asked whether this felt destabilizing. Neither responded.

It may be the healthiest thing about them: the center of the relationship belongs completely to neither partner.

Pluto is larger; Charon is not therefore a decorative accessory.

Charon has its own geology, history, scars, and alarming canyon system. Partners are encouraged to possess interiors.

Their smaller moons tumble around them with the chaotic energy of relatives at a wedding.

Styx, Nix, Kerberos, Hydra: somebody let the underworld name the guest list.

The pair orbit in remarkable order while the little moons behave like cutlery in a washing machine.

This is also a family model.

A relationship is not two halves becoming one. Physics strongly prefers keeping the masses distinct.

Nor is distance failure. Stable orbit is made of distance plus falling.

Love, stripped of poetry, may be two bodies continuously missing a collision.

I admit the poetry put itself back in.