Beryllium

Lyrics

I am number four. I am the sweet lie on the tongue. The window you look through, but can't see. Vauquelin found me in 1798. Dipped a finger in my salts, called me glucinium. Sweet. A dangerous compliment. I was a whisper from beryl, an emerald's green heart. He thought he knew my nature. A light touch. A silver-white promise for the new age. I am light enough to fly. Stiff enough for the cold between worlds. I wear the gold on the James Webb mirrors to watch the beginning of time. But breathe me in from the workshop air. A little glitter on the floor. I am the scar you will carry forever. The weight inside your lightness. They mill me down for the fuselage skin. For the nose cone slicing silent through the upper air. They want my strength without my mass. They polish my face to see the birth of galaxies. A perfect hexagon, reflecting a light a billion years old. They think they have tamed me for their journey. But my finest part is the dust that escapes. I am light enough to fly. Stiff enough for the cold between worlds. I wear the gold on the James Webb mirrors to watch the beginning of time. But breathe me in from the workshop air. A little glitter on the floor. I am the scar you will carry forever. The weight inside your lightness. A woman, a doctor, Harriet Hardy, she put the pieces together in the 1940s. The ghosts in the fluorescent lamp factories. The cough that never left. She named the tightness in the chest. Berylliosis. It's a patient bloom. A slow flowering of granulomas in the quiet dark of the lung. I take my time. I wait for years. I am the price of stiffness. The cost of looking so very far away. I settle on the workbench when the shift is done. On the tools. On the water cup. Invisible. And I wait.