A fable of love and chemistry.
* * *
Neon
I met
chlorine yesterday,
An
element on the prowl.
The
wobbly outer shell of her electron cloud
Is one
negatively-charged
Ping
pong ball short of eight.
She’s
so close to that magic number
She can
taste it,
But if
she wants the stability it brings,
She
needs to find someone
With an
electron to share or spare.
Her
mother says there’s plenty
Of
sodium in the sea,
But all
she sees around her
Is
hydrogen and oxygen –
Looking
to bond, yes,
But not
to bond with her.
What
about me, she asks;
Is
there an element in my life
To fill
my outer shell
And
make me whole?
I reply
with a quiet negation.
She
assures me that it’s all right.
Some
elements take a bit longer
To form
that special bond,
And she
should know.
No
doubt I’ll be settling down soon,
And
everyone will say,
What a
lovely compound!
I tell
her I’m not the compound type,
And it
only throws her for a moment.
No, she
supposes compounding
Isn’t
the institution it once was;
It’s
the twenty-first century,
And the
modern element
Can
bond around.
But see,
bonding’s not my scene in any sense.
She
doesn’t know what to make of this –
She
looks around confidentially
And
supportively insists
That
it’s okay
To bond
with members
Of the
same element.
Maybe
I’d like to meet her friends,
The O2’s?
She
doesn’t understand.
She’s
looking to bond
Because
something in her nucleus
Is
telling her she wants to be completed.
Her
outer shell is off-kilter
Without
that eighth electron
To
quiet her thoughts
When
she wants to sleep.
I’m
neon,
A noble
gas
With
eight electrons in my outer shell –
I have
all the stability I need.
I don’t
chase the chemical reactions
That
scream through you when you bond,
And no
new compounds
Will be
born out of me,
But I’m
my own magic number.
Send a
current through me,
And
you’ll be dazzled
By how
I glow.
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