ORIGIN STORY
after all this it’s
the miracle of what took –
blood vessels knotting their
fingers into the red room at
the center of me, the cure
that worked, the vaccine
that won. today I explained
to a mother and her furrowed
brow that the glass vial of
purified protein is nothing
compared to all that tries to burrow
into us with each breath, with
just a sip of tap water: soup
of viral capsids & acid
scraps, heavy metals &
chemical residues – the whole
sticky swirl of waste humans
leave in our wake. we
ought to be amazed, I tell
her, at what the body fights
off and what it opens to hold,
like the child who shifts
against the curve of my
spine, sucks its thumb a
little in the fluid dream
it’s had for months.
I could claim to be the
dream-maker, but the truth
is I have no idea how this
tiny world came to be in me.
some passing comet or well-
positioned thundercloud must have
opened this portal, prepared the
threshold, loosed the song
that started it all.
