her papers,
after 100 years,
are still radioactive
(a word she coined)

working with
Radium for years,
she loved the
glow from her bottles
in her lab at night,
they were her
“faint, fairy lights”

It takes too much to keep
this city clean; we wonder
if this is the worst of times,
or just one of those times.

With too much to do
I can’t lose a second
in 100 million years
to keep up.

my phobia of you
makes me afraid
of everything —
though in my car
I turn you on
and you light my way
through darkness

don’t tell me
you’re stable
if I go numb
when you let me
breathe you in

this is why
you must remain
my foreign fiend

where a man, made out of
                                tumors
ate actual cancer to survive

to rejuvenate himself
he submerged in an Iodine bath

what a revolutionary idea,
a far too human-looking man

eating your cancer.
And if he saved you —

what a beautiful world
it would be