Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems

Microchimerism

11 Microchimerism I Nub of human, shell pink fingernail, whether you live or all unformed leave her body she will never be without you. This, scientists tell us, is literally true: . . . the cells from her miscarriages, her stillborns, and all of her children . . . We carry them for a lifetime. But the cells actually go both ways. Nub of human, your cells migrate, are found at sites hurt in the maternal body, and in successive siblings, even those you never knew, even those who never knew you. II Nub of human, shell pink fingernail, she will never be without you. Vivid dreams in her bed echoed, a wall away and you felt her, knew her wakefulness through the quiet she maintained. 12 She knew it too and tried explaining, “It is like she is in me, knows my brain, and wakes me up before she wakes.” Darkness so soft she feels its nap cushion her movements, still she reaches you just as your cries begin, then you two are one again. Or more correctly, you never left: your cells and hers flowed back and forth— blood river once between you went two ways, scientists say: The waves of fetal microchimerism are just beginning to break along the scientific shore. Even in her milk, her milk for you—your milk, a million messages, recipes, connections. This month you demand brain grease, complex fats; next month another mix produced especially for you. She should have known when she craved avocado, salmon, sesame, and cursed the invective against sushi. 13 III Nub of human, shell pink fingernail— Who left cells in your mother that she gave to you? A million unknown others. What makes us our own sole and sovereign selves is only partially us. The search for God can be called off. Now we know: masses of genetic material not our own inside us, always with us, like the soul. I should not have said that about God. Forgive me, I am not myself. Italicized lines from Dr. Judith G. Hall, 2002, and from Bruce Morgan’s profile of Dr. Diana Bianchi in Tufts Medicine, 2005. ...