“Defensive from Fear” © Bill Wolak

 

in the lab

We had no safety training, my mom tells me.
The only rule was to try not to set yourself on fire.

It’s the second day of college chemistry and I am learning
about a girl who set herself on fire.
It happened in 2008, a year that for me
is little more than a string of moments, a wave of time
gray-washed through my mind.
She was 23.
She had a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, but she wasn’t even
wearing a lab coat, let alone any flame-retardant gear.
She was holding a syringe, her gloved hand two inches away
from a compound that would combust upon contact with air.
I remember my mom did a triathlon that year, how I left
to see her in the dampness before dawn,
the way she hugged me afterwards, slick with salt and pride
glowing in the rising sun.

It’s the fourth day of college chemistry and I am learning
not to pour water above my eye level, even with
these big clunky goggles suctioning my eye sockets.
I remember swimming with my mom, the goggles digging
into my cheeks. I remember when she was faster than me.

Yeah, we broke lots of things in the lab, my mom tells me.
All casual.
We broke things all the time.
And I know that there is more behind her words,
but I don’t push her. Some things need not have contact
with air.
Instead, I tell her all about our lab safety training
and she says Of course.
Can’t have those trust-fund babies setting themselves
on fire.

I tell her about the girl who died.
That was a freak accident, she says.
Those almost never happen.

 

Glenn Falacienski is a student at Colorado College. They saw two cadavers before the age of sixteen and worked as a political journalist before the age of eighteen. They are twenty-two now, and their greatest talent is hula-hooping and reading at the same time.

Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared recently in the 2024 Dirty Show in Detroit, the 2024 Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, the 2020 International Festival of Erotic Arts (Chile), the 2020 Seattle Erotic Art Festival ,the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival, and Naked in New Hope 2018. He was a featured artist in the book Best of Erotic Art (London, 2022).