Marie Curie
for Danielle
I am, for reasons I do not know, quite anxious to take her picture.
Bitter iron woman, cast in meal, pockets filled, I imagine, with the elements
that would eviscerate her.
She clutches no prizes (though she won a gold medal in gymnasium) and holds
at her side her precious journals, today stowed away, still lethal to the touch.
The statue does not, regrettably, convey the loss of a husband, the loss of a god, or fainting from hunger when she forwent sustenance to sustain her studies.
I had once been told that there exists film of her preparing her meals while conducting
research with highly radioactive materials, her hands still contaminated with uranium. I
imagined the plate and its contents as acid green, chemical and inedible-looking as she
ate, unaware that the would would call her brave, essential enough to preserve in metal and print, dressed in the blue wedding dress that she would wear in her laboratories.
“The greatest woman humanity has ever produced,” she would be called. Tourists would stand in the streets of Warsaw to photograph the vaulted halls where she once lifted her first test-tube.
Indeed, she might think, unknowingly dying slowly with each step she took, that such a distinction is quite a burden.
No comments:
Post a Comment