Snap the Vial

Lyrics

You are two liquids, held apart.
A promise sealed in borosilicate glass.
Hydrogen peroxide, patient.
And inside you, the ester waits.
Two worlds that must not touch.
Not yet.

Polyethylene tube, smooth in my palm.
I can feel the thin vial inside you.
The delicate spine of Michael Rauhut's patent from 1969.
I imagine the lab in October 1968.
The fume hood, the dark room.
The first sharp solvent smell.
The first time someone held their breath and bent the plastic.

And I snap the vial.
Just one bend, just one sound.
And the peroxide rushes in.
Hello, phenyl oxalate ester.
It's a cold green light you make.
Not a fire, just a reaction.
A light that is born already dying.

The American Cyanamid progress report from 1967.
It just says "Tech 3" mixed the batch.
No first name, no last.
Just an anonymous hand on the night shift,
stirring the solution that would one day fill you.
Tech 3, did you know what you were making?
A captured, temporary star.

And I snap the vial.
Just one bend, just one sound.
And the peroxide rushes in.
Hello, phenyl oxalate ester.
It's a cold green light you make.
Not a fire, just a reaction.
A light that is born already dying.

This isn't a flame to be fed.
This isn't a wire that glows with current.
It’s a chemical bond breaking just for me, just this once.
One way.
The light is just the sound of the lock turning,
and the key dissolving in the mechanism.
A one-way bloom, for eight good hours of borrowed time.
No second chance. No recharge.

And now you fade.
The green gets tired.
The glow pulls back into the plastic.
The promise is kept.
The vial is broken inside you forever.
And the light is gone.
Just a warm tube, full of darkness.