Astatine

Lyrics

I am the rumor in the lead-lined room.
The unstable one.
A name for what is gone too soon.

They made me in Berkeley, in 1940.
In the heart of a sixty-inch wheel of copper and steel.
They fired alpha particles at my cousin, Bismuth.
A flash of violence, and I was real.
For a moment.
For a spike on a needle, a crackle in the air.
Proof I was there.

They call me Astatine.
The ghost in the parlor.
The poison that decays before the cup is ever raised.
You can't gather me.
You can't weigh me.
I'm the half-life of hours.
Less than a gram in the whole wide world.
Just a click…
…and then the quiet.

I am the empty space in the family portrait.
The halogen sister who never stays for dinner.
They listen for me in the death of heavy things.
A phantom in the uranium chain.
A flicker.
A rounding error.
A theoretical stain.

Chlorine went to war, and carries the weight.
Fluorine guards your teeth, and seals your fate.
They are so certain, so solid, so present.
I just unravel.
I break the promise of the table.
I am the definition of unstable.

Listen.
Can you hear me?
There.
I'm gone.
Half of me is gone.