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JULIET: Dost thou love me?
I know thou wilt say "Ay," and I will take thy word: yet if thou swear'st, thou mayst prove false; at lovers' perjuries then say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully: or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown and be perverse an say thee nay, so thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light: but trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange. I should have been more strange, I must confess, but that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware, my true love's passion: therefore pardon me, and not impute this yielding to light love, which the dark night hath so discovered.
If I ever liked the darkness, it was that I had never truly beheld the light.
I was seven. My grandmother had been reading Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, in her room most of the afternoon when I happened by her room. She asked me to draw the curtains shut so she may take a nap. As I did so, she told me, "Each of us are born holding a box of matches inside us, which we cannot strike by ourselves. They need the right environment, and to come to light, they need a rise in temperature."
I did not understand what she meant, because, when she picked up a cigarette, I struck a match against the side of the box sitting by her bed and lit it for her. I thought myself perfectly capable of lighting as many matches as I liked.
And I didn't want to light too many matches, either. I thought her room was so much more interesting in the semi-darkness, with the strange shapes of all the things she had collected from her travels casting large shadows on everything else.
As a child, I liked the darkness because it swallowed everything. I could not sleep with my sister in the nursery because she was afraid of the dark and required a night lamp. I moved into a room across the hall and had blinds made so thick that no light from the gardens could disturb me. I was hidden. Like thoughts, secret.
Phosporus, a non-metallic chemical element, is normally a white, waxy solid that becomes yellow when exposed to the light. It is poisonous and unites easily with oxygen so that it ignites without question at room temperature. The substance was discovered in 1669 by a Hamburg chemist searching for the philosopher's stone. Perhaps he was not far from the truth.
The name "phosphorus" comes from the Greek words phos, meaning "light" and pherein, meaning "to bear."
THE STAR
As my mother lay in labor with me, my aunt was beside herself to find, after many calculations, that my guardian angel was Lucifer. She told my mother I would be beautiful and vain.
But as my mother held me in her arms, any worry she may have felt dissipated. I was a small baby, so small, in fact, that my parents' friends called me "petit four," after the small cakes; my hair was black and unruly; my skin prone to blemishes; my eyes were black, and the left somewhat lazy.
November is ruled by Aphrodite in the Eighth House. The house of passion and desire. The Morning Star is, after all, Venus.
Mother was disconcerted when, at seven, she found me staring at myself in the mirror, hypnotized. The small limbs that had characterized me as a baby had lengthened; her child now had a frame like that of her father, tall and slender. After the corrective eye surgery, my eyes had turned green, as though they had lightened with the removal of a burden. My black hair had lightened, and in its place was a rich, golden-brown mane.
I did not recognize myself, though I knew myself better than anyone. I was amazed by the power I held over my body and the ability I had to control its movements. Yes, I thought, this was beautiful. The most beautiful and marvelous thing I had ever seen.
My mother realized that her sister-in-law had perhaps been in the right and sent me from the mirrored room, saying that if I didn't stop, Lucifer himself would appear before me.
Lucifer: from the Latin lux, light, and ferre, to bear.
I was curious, so after she left for work the next day, I had my nanny do me up
