Carbonation

a poem

There is a way we try to make what cannot be made.

We measure, refine, repeat. We learn how to produce the feeling of something without ever touching its source.

I have started to wonder what is lost when we begin to believe that what is sacred can be engineered.

The following is a poem I wrote about these thoughts.

Carbonation

In the lab I tried to measure resurrection.

Beakers, pipettes, the clean blue flame.
Filtered water, sterile glass.
I calibrated sweetness to the decimal,
added citrus for brightness,
a trace of salt for memory,
the way a body remembers thirst long after a single swallow,
the hospital room, the silence after the machines.

The Believers wanted it to taste like the water
he once offered at a well.
They wanted it bottled,
labeled,
stacked in clean rows beneath fluorescent light.
They said faith should be reproducible.

I adjusted the pressure.
Increased the carbonation until the glass trembled.
The valves hissed.
The gauges climbed.
More sparkle.
More lift.
My hands shook inside the gloves.
As if breath could be engineered
back into a body that had gone still.

The first batch tasted like lime.
The second like mineral.
The third was bitter.

It fizzed bright against the tongue,
almost enough.
I held it there,
counting.
I swallowed anyway.

Nothing in it broke open the throat.

The pressure held.
For now.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

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With love,

Dawn