11-20-2025, 10:31 PM
"Radium Girl" (sestina)
In Warsaw’s grip, she learned to swallow grief,
Where knowledge was a shade, not a glow.
Russian tongues erased her native light,
But she memorised science like a law.
Smuggled thoughts in books beneath the dust,
And fed a mind too big for fear or home.
The strangers made her exile from her home;
She measured out her meals like rationed grief.
She borrowed books, scratched equations in the dust
as she studied journals by candle's glow.
Every minute spent under study’s law;
She came to Paris starving for that light.
Then Pierre: Not lover, but kindred law--
Aligned in wisdom, discipline, and dust:
A panacea for her father's grief,
She his foundation, he her guiding light.
Together, they built a love-filled home;
From mutual respect, true romance would glow.
They sought the hidden pulse within the glow,
The secret of an undiscovered law.
The world withdrew from their tranquil home
until they caught the phantom in the dust.
The world was awed; they tasted fame's keen light,
Their greatest joy before their greatest grief.
The cart obeyed the natural law,
Its crushing wheels ground his bones to dust.
She buried her love in a daze of grief,
Begged for God to return his guiding light.
She locked herself within her funeral home
and cried herself to sleep without his glow.
In hopeless grief, her work had lost its glow,
But for love's sake she self-imposed a law:
Her laboratory would become her home.
Every breath drew in lungs of deadly dust
as she strained failing eyes by wan lamp light;
The cancer ate her bones, and then her grief.
Her home is sealed behind thick glass and dust,
Her light still burns, but not without her grief;
The glow she left illuminates life and law.
This took me so long and it is so bad! Omg I hate sestinas
In Warsaw’s grip, she learned to swallow grief,
Where knowledge was a shade, not a glow.
Russian tongues erased her native light,
But she memorised science like a law.
Smuggled thoughts in books beneath the dust,
And fed a mind too big for fear or home.
The strangers made her exile from her home;
She measured out her meals like rationed grief.
She borrowed books, scratched equations in the dust
as she studied journals by candle's glow.
Every minute spent under study’s law;
She came to Paris starving for that light.
Then Pierre: Not lover, but kindred law--
Aligned in wisdom, discipline, and dust:
A panacea for her father's grief,
She his foundation, he her guiding light.
Together, they built a love-filled home;
From mutual respect, true romance would glow.
They sought the hidden pulse within the glow,
The secret of an undiscovered law.
The world withdrew from their tranquil home
until they caught the phantom in the dust.
The world was awed; they tasted fame's keen light,
Their greatest joy before their greatest grief.
The cart obeyed the natural law,
Its crushing wheels ground his bones to dust.
She buried her love in a daze of grief,
Begged for God to return his guiding light.
She locked herself within her funeral home
and cried herself to sleep without his glow.
In hopeless grief, her work had lost its glow,
But for love's sake she self-imposed a law:
Her laboratory would become her home.
Every breath drew in lungs of deadly dust
as she strained failing eyes by wan lamp light;
The cancer ate her bones, and then her grief.
Her home is sealed behind thick glass and dust,
Her light still burns, but not without her grief;
The glow she left illuminates life and law.
This took me so long and it is so bad! Omg I hate sestinas