Brain Mapping
The first color of the day is sky blue, at the window,
edged with grass green and a marbled pattern of apple leaves.
Wake up, visual cortex. There are too many must-do items
lined up (it’s Saturday) but the blue, blue, blue widens
eyelids, tugs the lips into an arc of pleasure, guides
the lilting calls of morning birds and then an auditory
connect with joy, triggered. Robins’ trills, nagging bluejays,
override of a crow insistent: listen without judgment
while the song of the house wren ripples like French
across the seat of love. Which is also
embedded, glowing, behind the racecourse of reason
and above the reptile brain, which unfolds one leg, the other,
balances the pulse of body and breath. Love is physiologic.
How enchanting, to map the blue, green, and red threads
of call and response, core and ripple. No CAT scan required:
merge bookshelves, make dinner together. We grew up
with maps on paper; slid unquestioning to GPS; the mind,
which is not the same as the brain, yearns to organize,
aches to respond. Love is an action verb, I’ve insisted,
pretending I knew the coordinates to tap.
Rx: Mifepristone
Call it the opposite of welcome home. Say goodbye to
a pulsing clump of cells, before naming. Before failure.
Don’t take this if you are past menopause (instructions say).
Avoid it if you’re ingesting fentanyl, warns the clinic webpage.
Don’t mix with blood thinners, heart failure, internal
yeast prescriptions, or if you’re treating malaria,
or with any drug that lowers cholesterol.
So why would you ever? Listen:
Have you seen those raw little faces?
First you have to notice them, to grieve them:
crusted noses running, cheeks red with rash, fussing
all the time. Sharp slap in the supermarket. Silenced with
rubber nipple on a stiff frame, stuffed between
unwiped lips. Bad baby, someone says; give him some
of this: secondhand smoke from excellent weed,
swig of sweet liquor, Adderall crumb.
Nobody remembers his first words.
In a nearby car, there’s a grandparent linked
to the borrowed safety seat, the box of diapers,
school schedule—signing up for food benefits
lining up for the low-cost clinic, coupons caught, cash
that barely covers store-brand mac & cheese. Child,
don’t outgrow that jacket yet. Short on sleep,
poor choices, no good ones affordable.
Weep for the ones who were never chosen.
Mifepristone tells the womb, Let go.
An after-rape rescue, a “what were we thinking” remedy,
last resort when you’re fighting cancer or genes malfunction,
slamming a sentence of round-the-clock caregivers
and lost jobs, shredded lives, onto the couple that once dared
to dream of sports and schools.
Notice the common side effects:
Sour stomach; back pain; dizziness; the runs. Regret and relief
(though those aren’t on the list). Depression. You contemplate
nine months. Eighteen years. All your linked lives, forever.
Call this a way to wait, a rite to re-route. Faith:
One day may offer a quicker quench. Hope hovers.
Meanwhile: Some days, there’s only mifepristone.
Beth Kanell lives in northeastern Vermont among rivers, rocks, and a lot of writers. Her poems seek comfortable seats in small well-lit places.