O stiff-limbed back-born being;
to the you who is doused in 70% ethanol and prodded with silvered indifference,
with arms splayed open in the final act of tender protestation,
teach me how to live.
does the sweet air still burn with your grand guise?
did your nebulous eyes strain for a kaleidoscopic light?
soft monarch, gentle god,
I imagine you only find my inquisition a duplicitous dusk beyond dawn.
and when I hold open your ever-dear viscid ribs, I imagine it is;
that is to say, I am.
there is no absolution to be cradled from your stolen time,
no magnanimous grace for the human hands holding a stainless-steel scythe.
yet I hear faintly a perennial proclamation in the might of nature’s debt,
life insists on life.
life insists on life,
life insists on life—
so here lies the laboratory mouse,
the one who taught me that how to live is how to bear loss.
I wrote this poem based on my experience in the lab with albino mice—specifically their dissection and tissue harvest. Combined with the sentiment behind the famous ‘Monument to the Laboratory Mouse‘, I tried to express my personal thoughts and feelings on the use of mouse models in experimental research. This poem has also been published on the Poets for Science website, an organization dedicated to exhibiting the interconnection between the disciplines. Check them out!
Momo's Musings 