The element, not the planet. The sharp teeth of a seven-month-old baby biting through the glass of the oral thermometer. Lord in Heaven, she bit right through it. Right through it—to expose the liquid mercury. We’re talking old-school thermometers—not the digital ones—old-school stuff that even the new medical assistants in your doctor’s office don’t know how to use. But back to my daughter and her teeth biting through the glass thermometer. The quicksilver drops of mercury—looking like pieces of the evil cop in the second Terminator movie morphing back to life after being killed—the liquid gray drops of mercury floating in her mouth. Her mother (that would be me) scared to death that she’d swallow that toxic substance and morph into an alien. And even the reassurance of the local Poison Control Center could not assuage my worry, my anxiety, my guilt. Even hearing that mercury in that primal state is a basic element and would pass straight through from her mouth to her gut to her disposable diaper. “Just look for the silver drops,” the voice at the other end of the phone says. The voice from the Poison Control Center that tries to reassure me. The mother filled with guilt, as her daughter is filled with the liquid silver named after the god of the planet next to the sun.

Bio: Linda Nemec Foster