Resin

I wonder how you feel as you lie there, a tumor pressing on your frontal lobe.

I sit beside you with a little jar and resin-wrapped moss inside

pain pressing on the inside of my head, held guarded in my cells, captured with now hardened glue:

your pain, I like to think,

pain I could pick up and roll around in my fingers like moss-fibers, until it disintegrates in the oils of my skin.

I wonder if I could preserve your mind and soul in a jar of resin.

I like to think and wish; I like to revel in this false permanence I’ve created and try to forget the tumor in your head.

I wish I could pull it apart

or that I could take it from you and put it in my head so that I could feel

your pain,

and you wouldn’t have to.

-Hazel Milla is a junior from Chapel Hill, NC, pursuing a major in Neuroscience and a minor in Creative Writing.-