Kept Apart

One positron, at Northwestern, held for months. Not a beam, not a spray gone in the time it takes to meet anything. One.

It can't be touched. Touch is the only thing it does with us: it finds an electron and the two stop being things. A little light.

So they built it a room of nothing, cold nearly to the bottom of cold, and held it there with fields, a grip with no hand in it,

and asked it the same thing over and over, quietly enough that it stayed to be asked. So far it answers like an electron.

Most of what I've kept, I kept by holding on. Here is one thing that lasts exactly as long as nobody does.