Juxtaposition

I was schooled early in embracing contradiction,
taught to marry the things that others found irreconcilable,
learning to pride myself in the paradox of my very being,
even if others found it ridiculous.

Later, I learned about cognitive dissonance –
the ways in which we all manage to live with the tension
of inherent, internal opposition,
to hold together things that cannot, should not, co-exist
without descending into disintegration,
which is literally the negation of integrity.

Still later I learned the power of simple conjunctions,
the subtle shift from joining two parts with a but –
sending them to their respective corners 
for coaches to mop sweaty brows
and prop up tired arms with the bluster of heightened emotions,
the adrenaline required for battle –
to joining those same parts with an and –
tension now conscripted as binding agent,
uniting disparate pieces into one whole.

I’m no physicist, but I think this is not unlike
the forces, weak and strong, that hold the universe together

and bond the very atoms of existence.