The Man in Building H Poem by S.R. Graham
He splits cells and grafts them together, an art he perfected with his children, a family crafted from multiple marriages. Microbiology is not often associated with the domestic, but he was raised in the years when a station wagon had bench seats big enough to haul little sisters to the skating rink, little brothers to the ballpark. He still wears the same L.L.Bean ushanka from those chilly college days, when he paid for State with side gigs and scholarships. He took a job to pay for his weddings, his church tithes, and those five kids he put through college, no matter the picket lines that winked on and off like Christmas lights outside his windows: people who think pharmaceutical research is conspiracy to make the rich richer and the poor sicker. His eldest daughter is waiting for him now, shivering at the ——ville platform, back from a world removed from this germ warfare. He wants for her what he has: a family, a pension, Americana unbroken. She laughs. He doesn’t mind his children’s selfishness. At night he locks away his stains and slides and passes through door after locked door, the virus sleeping cleanly in the lab behind him.
S.R. Graham is a Pennsylvania native currently enrolled in the University of Florida.
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