i. Phosphorus; atomic number 15, essential for life yet never found as a free element on Earth. It was given its name for Lucifer, for light-giver; surrounded by the oxygen we breathe, it glows.
ii. You and the colour blue have a lot in common, although I’ll always associate you with red. The cliché of an ocean, of a river that meanders smoothly through my blood and feels like it’s always been there, running that river, so I don’t realise until it’s too late. I’m empty. I’ve got no more tears, no more tides. The cliché of a spreading bruise and your voice a hum, the rest just spindrift.
iii. Am I more like a swarm than a girl? I feel buzzing under my nails and tongue, my skin a hive of nervous bees. I feel dizzy in crowds and on train platforms because what if this body decides to jump? I picture bad moments so vividly; they never happen, the person under a train, a contagion of fire, a sudden silence and inexplicable emptiness. I count and count again what could go wrong and weigh it against the fragile goodness that I try to sew, but my calculations are always erroneous and nothing can put a leash on chaos.
iv. Combustible, relating to combustion; able to catch fire and burn easily.
v. We are brittle eyelashes and frostbitten edges, oxymorons and poor translations; our hearts are begging with each beat to escape this burning orbit, to crawl away and find somewhere beyond our atmosphere, where the constellations will have a place for each of them.
vi. Touch me and you will feel it- me as electricity. the blush of my cheeks and how my hair is always messy. In this simplicity, I catch myself wordless and that makes no sense. I don’t have words for the burning- burns that left scars before, burns that won’t leave them now or do any damage at all because it’s not a real brand, it’s not the white-hot heat I try every day to forget I know the feel of or know of at all. It’s just the feeling that comes when you’ve so long been isolated and the touch of another burns so beautifully, so warm. There’s me and not just me and a switch flicking, no noise, no static, no unbecoming. I know I’m shaky, it’s been that way for years. But maybe now it’s just the shock of falling into something good. Something safe again.
vii. Melting, to melt: to thaw when exposed to heat. To become more tender, to become more loving.
