Love, Reduced

The love that makes a human long,

Cultivates hope, inspires song,

Is said to live within the heart,

Embedded from the very start.

It runs within the nervous system,

Textbook biomechanisms.

Neurons strengthen when reused,

Synapses reinforced and fused.

Dopamine increases drive.

Reward pathways connect and thrive.

Norepinephrine shifts the rate

At which the heart now fluctuates.

Oxytocin bonds mark their place,

Through touch, through trust, through warm embrace,

Vasopressin serves to maintain

Attachment tracts within the brain.

Each pathway fixed, each signal timed,

Just like a poem’s formal rhyme.

It follows rules of stress and sound.

Its structure can be broken down.

Yet what cannot be fully named

Is what gives language weight and aim.

Words may point to roles and parts,

But data cannot show the heart.

For hearts in cardiology

Are not the source of poetry.

The beating organ moves the blood.

But does not write and does not love.