Somebody I Used to Love Asks Me Who Marie Curie IsAnd that, finally, breaks my heartalthough so many potentially heartbreaking things have alreadybeen said, although I hadn’t even known there was heart left in me to be broken,but here I am. Because even if we somehownever-mind those elements she pulled upfrom the earth and named as tenderly as she named her own two daughters,those gold medals that the French National Bank refused when she tried to hand them over to be melted down for the war efforts of an adopted home,this was a woman who kept her passionso tightly at her chest that it turned fatal.I mean it frankly.This is not a metaphor.Mme. Curie walked frequently with rodsof radium packed close against her heartin the pockets of her laboratory dresses,she slept sometimes with it pillowed right by her head, decaying alkalinebonded to decaying woman, until half a lifetime of exposure killed her.The story is necessary. It feels unfairthat someone doesn’t know, like every precious gram of burning metal’s been reburied and forgotten,like Curie was just anotherlovesick woman, like everythingis hopeless. I don’t know how I got here.I want to say it wasn’t real, my misused love,I want to beg forgiveness from a grave.I feel like both betrayer and betrayed.

— Carly Rubin

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