Size / / /

I meant to write a poem for your wedding

about superfluids. About quantized groupings

whose singular momentum pushes up and over containers -

about transmission of heat, creation of vortices,

the creation of h/m proportions of vortices

where h is plank's constant -

a spun bucket that holds a dozen whirlpools.

I meant to write that you were aligned together

in the same quantum state,

and could not be contained. I meant to write

a poem of matter, of transition points -

of energy that transforms liquid to gas -

of boiling water at a steady temperature

as molecules leap into vapor.

They don't use the term latent heat anymore.

I can't use it to say you've changed states.

It was a long time building, only seeming

the same, like boiling water, as you transformed

into something that rises.




Romie Stott is the administrative editor and a poetry editor of Strange Horizons, and author of the horror novel Nothing in the Basement (Dybbuk Press, 2025). Romie's poems have appeared in inkscrawl, Dreams & Nightmares, Polu Texni, On Spec, The Deadlands, and Liminality, and elsewhere. You can find her fairly complete bibliography here. Outside of poetry, she is best known for her essays in The Toast and Atlas Obscura, and short stories in Analog and Tractor Beam. As a filmmaker, she has been a guest artist of the National Gallery (London), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), and the Dallas Museum of Art. She is half of the electronica duo Stopwalk, and is the playwright behind the musicals "First, Contact" and The Lady Takes the Mic.
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