Chemical Attractions, Part I

We can learn a lot from salt.

The chlorine atom is fundamentally lacking, longing to fill that gaping hole in its valence shell, and those bright bits of energy dancing in amorphous clouds around a sodium atom are just too tempting for the poor chlorine to resist. Chlorine probably knows that it has no claim to those electrons. It might lie awake at night for days or weeks in a fit of conscience, seeking alternatives before sending out tentative feelers and inviting Sodium to join it for coffee... It's a romantic comedy in minature, and I think that we can skip over the montage of dates and dinners and late nights on the couch in front of a forgotten movie, set to some perky but meaningless tune of the early Nineties.

It's only much later, once caught in the throes and tedium of a borderline-abusive relationship, that Sodium begins to understand the true nature of an ionic bond, begins to search and grope in vain for those lost luminous stars that Chlorine stole back in the early days, back when thrall and dependence seemed romantic rather than unhealthy. At that point, it's too late, and the bond is all but unbreakable. It takes a glass of water, a symbolic drowning, to dissolve the chains and allow Sodium to escape, bruised and empty, to seek a replacement for the energies and vigour it had never known were gone. It takes suicide-by-metaphor before there can be a rebirth.

And Chlorine, left behind, festers in its own toxicity and crawls yellow-bellied along the ground in search of a scapegoat to waste in revenge for the burning gap that Sodium used to fill. The anger is superficial, though, and I suspect that it masks such deep remorse, such willingness to give back those stolen lights, if only it were possible.

I suppose that what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry.