Romantic Love

The title of the poem, "Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity" is meant humorously. It refers to Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, published in 1905, and his general theory of relativity, developed in 1915 and 1916. Using calculations based on the postulate of the uniform speed of light and the relativity of motion (the motion of something can be determined only by its relation to something else), Einstein showed that time is measured differently for people moving relative to one another. At speeds of light, time would slow to near zero.

In the popular mind, Einstein's theory, which is too complex for most laymen to understand in detail, has given rise to the idea that under certain circumstances, time might flow backward rather than forward. The actual physics of this notion is not important for the poem. Cisneros merely uses the idea as a jumping-off point for...