Adaptation
It’s science’s nature to say sacrifice instead of kill.
As in my friend who sacrifices five mice a day
in lab to cure some type of cancer. She’ll
play her role as God would, order fifty more. Obey
humane responsibilities. Some days forgetting
to think about ruin or bodies easily
manipulated, she is bloodletting—
must wear a mask and gloves, civilly
searches for specifics with months-old blood
on her white coat. Sometimes she finds herself
holding their bodies as she wishes to be: flawed,
still held at night alone after the fourth
evening shift—close to the skin of her
hands but never exactly quite touching there.
Hands (but never exactly quite) touching, there
the mice sedated enough not to know
the difference between what is real—here,
her plastic hands, the heat between the low
incandescent burn of white light or miles
away sun—or real enough. Sometimes
she dreams about dying, meeting her self
with God—Him holding her in those grains
of one golden, sterile field. I have questions
about the dead. Bodies. Constant need for attention.
Sunday, a toddler fell into a well. Casualties
my friend does not look up to question,
instead grasps another needle, injects
Specimen 766 with those liquid-cold contents.
Specimen 766 with those liquid-cold contents
shakes straight to its veins. Fifty in, fifty out
my friend says. Silently, the toddler fell. Attempts
to fill the days as long as land’s overnight
mirroring of sky, the floods came. All cloud.
All heft of no crop on the farmers’ shoulders.
They said God sees all things, has plans. Drought
and facts never change and summer smolders
God’s mighty voice the same as the toddler,
saying Let there be light when light never
once shone through. Somewhere, a mother
holds a body that fell into a well; with pressure
a researcher rubs death into what is tranquil.
It’s science’s nature to say sacrifice instead of kill.