To listen to a reading of the poem by the author, click on the audio below:
There are easier ways to have near-death epiphanies
if you are a writer, or scientist, or both.
You don’t have to ride a bike thinking it’s okay to have one brake
that works. You don’t have to wait until the day purrs and lies back,
when all that lies between you and home
is a long empty stretch of slope
waiting to be dashed down before a car
that was too far in your dream-mare
swerves in
from the side,
to know that the brake is not quite
the lone kidney of the roads, not really
to spare.
When you do summon the will to turn your head
not unlike a hen when it first graduates the egg
and makes the move to coop,
look between the seven days of a week.
What a peculiar species, the human beast.
At twenty-six, you sleep to take breaks
from the arduous journey that is staying adult through the day.
You stretch to find your muscles are less cookie, more clay.
There are easier ways to have near-death epiphanies
than breaking the still air of a room full of hungry people
with a biscuit crackle.
When you sit in a sea of otters or penguins or parakeets
who I forget are actually poets
trying to be anything but themselves.
The views expressed in this piece are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the Editorial Board, the Scholars’ Council, the Gates Cambridge Trust or the University of Cambridge.
Spatika Jayaram ['23] is completing her PhD in Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, studying how such changes in the prefrontal cortex can lead to the early onset of neuropsychiatric disorders, by examining their impacts on behaviours that are commonly dysregulated across these conditions. She is also the Gates Scholars Council’s Community Officer for the 2024 year.
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