Periodic

Abstract

Periodic Aimee Nezhukumatathil (bio) My son has five or six shirts that feature the Periodic Table. The one that guarantees a flip for my dark mood sports a bold print of that famous chart and underneath in block letters: 'I wear this shirt periodically.' I can't help it— I'm an easy audience. He loves the order, the minerals and elements packed in stacks and stacks of squares. The meanest thing he's ever done is tell his younger brother, Jasper, that 'J' is the only letter missing from the Table. Of course, J would burst into tears. But now my littlest guy knows a retort: Jasper means beautiful mineral—ancient Egyptians forged and set special rings of it for their Pharaohs and Queens. Last week, my husband told us our bodies have enough graphite to make 9,000 pencils each. We ooohed and ahhhed— and meant it. Yes, we are a family of nerds. Periodically we fight, but never for long, and any wounds heal quickly. We've taught these boys how to apologize, how to look people in the eye when they say Sorry. Periodically, a storm smacks us hard in our sleepy town, nestled in Mississippi's velvet ditch. When lightning strikes, it's fifty-four thousand degrees Fahrenheit. That's another fact I once heard from my boys. And maybe that is the closest to the actual blaze I hold in my heart for them. I know one day my eldest will grow out of those shirts. J will not even want them second-hand. Periodically, I will make plenty of mistakes. Many elemental or unavoidable mistakes spill out. My sons are almost teenagers now. I don't know how much longer I will write about them. On dark days, I'll remind myself what sweetness there was just from lifting a child's clean and dripping body from a tub. The chemical reaction I got from a fluffy hooded towel, and two giant eyes looking up, up, up at me. [End Page 115] Aimee Nezhukumatathil Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Oceanic, winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Her book of illustrated nature essays is forthcoming with Milkweed. Her writing has appeared in POETRY, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, and Tin House. She serves as poetry faculty for the Writing Workshops in Greece and is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi's MFA program. Copyright © 2020 Pleiades and Pleiades Press