i first saw you
in the cold protvino lab
with your cathode-ray tubes tied up way out of your face

watching from afar
i observed the atoms you smashed
and the resultant particles
ephemeral and transitional
all recorded on my clipboard
hungry to see you running again

when they first let me near you
all my training dropped like necrotic skin
dead dead weight
sheaf of research papers
scattering on sterile sheet-concrete

my head was barely in for a second
when i saw your real face
a blue flash
brighter than a thousand suns
tearing through my occipital lobe

immediately spilling onto the floor
was my evidence that the dosage was fatal
the nausea is purportedly immediate
proton currents are supposedly sour

strangely enough, you didn’t hurt at all