Because my father was the X in X+ -e > X- + energy.
Because my sister knits plutonium sweaters.
Because none of my valence shells will ever fill.
Because I love figuring out what all the arrows point to.
Because speaking of shells, let me share with you some of my favorites:
angel wing, horse mussel, knobbed whelk.
Because even though I misread ionization as intoxication, I’m sober
as a lab mouse.
Because lighting a Bunsen burner is the first step in creating an altar.
Because I also misread atomic radii as aromatic radii, dreamt a giant composite
radiating orange peel and rhyme.
Because I could get serious about electron affinity, especially dressed
in a powder-blue frock.
Because I’m always stepping away from the hood to look up words like mercurial.
Because nothing I’m fond of will function at standard pressure and temperature.
Because I understand how Marie Curie spent all those painstaking hours
weighing pitchblende.
Because I try not to revel but I revel, shattering (sorry!) every pipette
within a 100-mile radius.
Because even though the elements are more like friends I want to dance the Macarena with,
I swear my allegiance to the Copernican principle.
Because “to solve” derives from the Latin solvere: to loosen, untie, release.
Because solving’s just another word for letting go.
–
Martha Silano has authored five poetry collections, most recently Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). She is co-author, with Kelli Russell Agodon, of The Daily Poet: Day-by-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice. Martha’s poems are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She teaches at Bellevue College.