The law of universal gravitation claims that a force of attraction pulls any non-zero mass objects together, so why aren't you attracted to me yet? 

Chances are high that you're cringing at how ridiculous that sounded because trust me; looking at it now, I can't believe I wrote it too. There are probably more intriguing riddles of the cosmos that are worth every micron of my neurons and glial cells. Still, I chose to drag classical physics and Einstein's oeuvre into this "unrequited admiration" or whatnot. 

Classic me, I suppose. 

You see, I was doomed from the get-go. Newton had long written my fate in his tedious equations: every particle of me must share a mutual attraction with every particle of you. 

Now, who else am I to blame but the laws of nature? I have made sure to keep a gap of caution between us—to keep you miles away from reach. I must not fall. I cannot afford this fall. Not when I am bound to crash alone. 

But no matter how hard I try to resist, the weight on our shoulders and the ever-growing magnitudes of affection inevitably pulls us together. And if distance is supposedly a dividing entity, why must my adrenaline surge as if it's a challenge I ought to conquer?

Curse gravity for making me fall this hard.

It is as if you have warped my very fabric of reality. Your name carved itself in every corner of my cranium. At 3 AM, when my brain is left idle; it shows the "us" that I never thought I wanted. Brushing my fingertips against yours triggers unfamiliar sensations I deny at the pretense of awkwardness. Every dawn of a new day, this mass I harbor for you exponentially gets heavier enough to be unbearable. 

Tell me, why must you resist a force so fascinating? 

What keeps you from submitting yourself into a state of free-falling? I wonder what stops you from letting go of the restrictions you enforced upon yourself and just blindly letting gravity take over without any resistance. Just how long will it take you to fall for me too?

I cannot calculate the time required for you to land in my safe haven, as a myriad of variables remains unknown; like the distance that remains unconquered. Much like gravity, there are still certain mysteries about you that I have yet to unravel. 

Let's get to know each other, so that I may discover the needed set of information to confront this kinematics conundrum. 

And while we're at it . . . 

Why not fall for me?

-Valerie Rose V. Ferido

(Illustration by Alexandra Lim/FEU Advocate)