Potential Energy

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Lips against your skin, taking in your scent,

you smell like mine, like ours, profoundly.

Profoundly soft, and downy, like a Platonic peach,

the top of your head was my first electric connection.

Connection: primal, instant, but not the love

that requires all of my mind; that took time.

Time bends around your spacial gravity.

Hours move like seconds and like years.

Years will mean nothing to you, the entirety

of your parents flirtation and devotion before —

Before you were born, my life contained

always your potential energy.

Energy turned to matter, turned to you

through me.

For Leo, age 7 weeks

Adina Langer grew up in Princeton Junction. She has a B.A. in history and creative writing from Oberlin College and an M.A. in archives and public history from New York University. When not working as the curator of the Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University or helping to knit together a life in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband and two young children, Adina finds time to write poetry. She has poems published in the Edison Literary Review, Enchiridion, and the Plum Creek Review, among others.

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US1 | Issue 10/21/2026

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