Symmetry is a myth

There are no straight lines in the universe

“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact
that there is no reason for any difference.”
–Blaise Pascal

There are no straight lines in the universe.
Not in the curl of a wave,
Not in the arch of a spine,
Not in the path of a thought,
We dream them into being.

Symmetry is a myth.

Symmetry is a mind’s shorthand for perfection,
An abstraction, a mathematical proposition really.
A desperate grasp at order
In a world of water-carved canyons and islands formed of fire,
Where even diamonds grow with scars inside.

Symmetry can give you butterflies
But that is your body’s warning;
Anxiety means something is amiss.
The universe is not symmetrical
Nor are faces, or forests, or myths, or mathematics.

The ancient civilizations chased butterflies
They fought chaos with angle and line.
We build our cities the same way
Stacking glass, concrete, and stone
We replace the wild sprawl with another.

This symmetry haunts us daily.
The geometry of our modern grief
Is boxes that contain boxes,
That contain boxes,
That contain us.

Look closer at what moves you:
We are at rest in the imperfect.
The coffee ring on an old letter,
The asymmetric smile that stops your heart,
The crooked path that leads you home.

Our tools are symmetry machines.
Pixels aligned like soldiers,
Stamps pressing perfect circles,
Into the flesh of reality.
But beauty lives in the breaks:

In the delicate flecks in her iris,
In the wobble of a child’s first step,
In the crack where the light gets in,
In the universe’s magnificent lean,
Toward beautiful disorder.