In High School

Abstract

In High School Ruth Madievsky (bio) I miss the charcoal drawing of gallium that hung in my chemistry class.How the metal whose melting point is below human body temperaturewas misspelled galium, how the hand cupping the silver goop stoppedat the wrist. I don't think it was meant to disturb, to invoke a caughtthief. I don't think the charcoal spreading up the wrist was meant toremind me of gangrene, of the foot we took this year from my patientwho couldn't afford insulin. There is a famous prank where a chemist serves tea with a galliumspoon. I would drink the tea, molten metal and all. When, as a kid, Ifound flies in my tea, my grandmother would say, Каждая пылинка,тоже витаминка, every speck of dust is a vitamin. I stared at thisdrawing four days a week for two years. I liked knowing there aremetals you can cut with a knife, spread like butter. No one asks to be gallium. When we took his foot, my patient said, I'llsee you soon for the other. When I was nine and had changed out ofthe fringed thong back into my jeans, I told the handyman, I'll see youlater. I wonder who has the drawing now. How long I could suspendmy hand in an ice bath to keep the gallium whole. [End Page 113] Ruth Madievsky Ruth Madievsky is the author of a poetry collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016). Her work appears in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Guernica, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of the Cheburashka Collective, a community of women and nonbinary writers whose identity has been shaped by immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States. Originally from Moldova, she works as an HIV and oncology pharmacist in Boston, Mass. Copyright © 2020 Emerson College