'Elemental' by Lisa Amico Kristel

Periodically, I feast and leave nothing on the table. Calcium, magnesium, barium, all—I swallow the earth. Grounded. I swallow lithium for balance. Too little, too late, too up, too down. Mercurial. A transition: I swallow my heart; it sinks like lead. Depressed. Sulfur, tin, antimony, poor me. Arsenic beckons. I swallow heavy metal to quell the temptation, listen as it quiets the silence—bismuth, thallium, rhodium, gold. Weighty. A rare-earth release, promethium fire. I gulp oxygen, carbon. Alive. I rise past the krypton-ite sun. At day’s end, I float free, on a helium cloud to meet the moon in neon. Noble.