by Amelia Loeffler
The MRI machine is white, smooth, hollow. I lie still inside it and imagine I am lying within the weakest parts of my own aching hip, femur, sacrum.
I ask the magnetic field to show me exactly where I hurt, to coerce from my body the precise breakpoint it hides from itself, the place I feel but can’t find.
I am still, except for my deep breaths, inhales rippling like pressure waves through me, slightly shifting, rising, falling, shaking loose a dull throb that hums from bone.
Inside of me: karst, prone to sinkholes, the limestone worn thin underfoot, years of erosion and fissures sure to snap, no map will say where it is safe to bear weight.
I think I want to go home but what I mean is I want to feel safe inside myself. I want to run full speed down a steep hill and move so fast I am almost falling,
both arms flung wide like the wingspan of a goose, hollow boned and flying home for the winter, following some internal compass, drawn by some magnetic force,
catching myself over and over on each downstep, letting the impact vibrate through me and leave my body singing like frequency from a tuning fork struck against the knee.
Pegasus 