Bromine

Lyrics

I am the color of old blood in a bottle.
The red-brown haze over the salt flats at dusk.
The smell of the sea, but wrong.

They called my salts a kindness. A gentleman's solution.
A prescription against the modern world's frantic pulse.
1857. Sir Charles Locock told the Royal Society I was the perfect cure
for the hysterical woman, the sleepless poet, the epileptic child.
"Keep taking the bromides," the doctor wrote.
A heavy, chemical blanket for your shivering nerves.
A spoonful of quiet in a brown glass bottle.
A dull, thick peace.

Breathe me in.
I am the vapor in the air, the sting in your eyes.
The stillness you begged for.
I am the red liquid sleep.
The anchor in your blood.
The long, slow sinking into the dark.
This is the calm you paid for.

You can find me on holiday, if you like.
At the Dead Sea, where the air is thick with my family.
My briny temper.
I am the reason you float so easily on the surface.
I hold you up. I cradle you.
No effort required.
Just lie back in the unnatural water and stare at the sun.
Look at the salt pillars on the shore.
Don't I make it easy to do nothing at all?

Breathe me in.
I am the vapor in the air, the sting in your eyes.
The stillness you begged for.
I am the red liquid sleep.
The anchor in your blood.
The long, slow sinking into the dark.
This is the calm you paid for.

Don't mistake my languor for safety.
I am restless, volatile.
I spill. I stain the wood. I rise.
The other liquid element, Mercury, he just wants to run away.
But I want to fill the room.
A heavy, corrosive, red-brown fog.
The fire can't breathe when I'm there.
The ghost in the photograph owes its shade to me.
Can you breathe me?

So heavy now.
The blanket is so heavy on your chest.
The quiet.
So... quiet... now.