final_thp_2ndedition

THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE
a boy,
a girl,
and a withered old man
They sat on cushioned chairs across
from each other, knees touching, in a
small coffee shop. The barista was in
the back somewhere; the only other
customer was an old man reading a
novel in the corner of the room. The
boy looked at the girl, and the girl
looked at the old man. She liked to
think that he was watching them, too,
when neither of them were watching
him. Perhaps he lost his lover when
they were both nineteen. He has been
lonely ever since, and has found that
one of the most beautiful things is
unrestrained love – the kind that only
youth can sustain.
She turned back around and faced
the boy. Isn’t it funny how there is you,
and then there is the way that I perceive
you? That the firing of neurons in their
synapses through the squishy grey matter
of my brain makes up my perception
of you. He looked at her, silently,
unblinkingly. Maybe he didn’t think
it was funny that he was just a series
of neural impulses in her mind. Or
maybe his coffee had lost its heat and
he couldn’t decide whether to order
another one. He lifted a hand, pale
beneath layers of scarves and sweaters,
and gently brought it to her face.
He brushed a few of her hairs away
from her eyes the way one would fold
delicate lace.
Under his doe-like gaze, she
continued. That every time I see you,
hear your voice… think of you, those
chemical stimuli trigger the release of
certain molecules. I only know a few of
them by name, but together they create
this sensation that I’ve learned to call
happiness. She kissed him on the left
corner of his mouth. Serotonin. She
kissed him where the lines of his jaw
end. Norepinephrine. She kissed his
fluttering eyelid. Dopamine. He kissed
her on the center of her lips. Oxytocin.
The old man closed his book and
looked out the window through
streaks of rain. The boy didn’t notice
the pattering of raindrops over the
pulse of his heart. The girl listened
to the sound of her cells dying, and
wondered when her neurons would
become too frail and cynical to form
synapses with each other.
BY|TIFFANY NGUYEN
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