How nice would it be if
Empathy
Was as easy as cross check done move on?
As simple as sewing several stitches
Slapping on a “come back in a few weeks”
Put some ice on it and pop a few pills?

Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges.
Trauma bleeds.
Out of wounds and across boundaries.
Sadness becomes a seizure.

When someone carves their soul open
Letting its contents spill out
The blood and guts in all their glory
How can the bandaid of that must really be hard
Stop the stream of sorrow?
How do we expect to be a tourist in the suffering of others
While reducing them to a bundle of symptoms?

Empathy is not a meteor shower of synapses
Firing across the brain
It is a choice we make to extend ourselves.

If you want to show empathy
Get your bags packed and your passport ready
You enter another person’s pain
As you’d enter another country.
You crawl into that box
Even if it’s a tight fit
And you sit.
And you listen.
And you let yourself be pierced by pain and bittersweetness
And you look for the horizon beyond the visible.
You don’t steal an experience, but you share the slice of story.
You learn that even if you mark checklist item thirty-one
It will never be over, never really cross check done.

When I first heard that cats were stuffed in poison boxes
“For the sake of physics!”
And that I was being pulled by particle puppeteers
Bending at the will of the quark queens
I wanted to snip the invisible strings
That entangled me into time-
      My brain is plastic, but not that plastic.
But we all know that no thread means dead,
And with the closing of shears comes the closing of years,
So somehow I have to accept the entwinement of time,
Calling it an envelope versus suffocation,
Embracing my identity as another fish in the net.
My life is a tumultuous tumbling into truth
So I’ll bite-
     I’ll let it wrap its layers around me.
After all, I’m no stranger to strange connection;
If I ever have time to spare,
I turn apples to eyes and hearts to metal
in the matter of a nanosecond.
But how can I meet a stranger
And call it love
In a picosecond?
How can I stretch into the sundae of sky
With stars scattered like sprinkles
And reach the caramel core of connection?
This isn’t one scoop of constellation confetti, please-
It’s not as simple as a cup or cone.
This is the sticky saltwater taffy
Before it is wrapped into ribbons.
So I grab my hammer and go to town.
It’s not easy, and sometimes
My neurons want to melt
dri
     p  p
    i
        ng
Down the page
But I grit my teeth and demand
The particles to stop propagating
For one second
And talk to me as a galaxy pedestrian.
They tell me that
The only way to see my string
Is to sit with you.
And with what time?
With no notepad?
With nothing but two forces
Tied together with
Nothing but coffee in between?
These particles can’t process
Time constraints, deadlines, schedules.
I sigh, and I try anyway.
When suddenly I am not on your sofa
But your rollercoaster
The thread of our souls made visible
With each dip and dive, each loop and lurch
You give me a piece of your world.
And suddenly we are not strangers
And tugging at heartstrings
Means something new
The layers of universe
Lead me to you.

It's no longer that sharp kind of pain
that shocks you
and leaves you breathless.
It's the consistent, dull thud
of a daily constant
the throb you can get through,
you just have half the oxygen
and half the strength.
The entire world is going
at a million miles an hour
and I have drooped;
sticky eyelids, purple rings
a film covering everything I see.
I used to cope by releasing the
uncontrollable sobs in the shower-
it was more efficient to make a mess of myself
while simultaneously being cleaned.
Now I feel so much that I don't feel like I feel at all.
I wake up covered in sweat and existential dread
knowing that the day holds sagging eyes
and a fake it til you make it mindset
that turns into lying because you haven't made it.
How do you describe your feelings
of cotton coupled with regret
without sounding like a basket case?
You don't,
so you shift your gaze
and shove it down
and drown yourself in anything else.
You remain collected
as you crawl out of your skin
if the outside offense is exhaustion,
it holds no candle to the tumultuous
that is those threads piecing you together inside.
The strings may eventually thin and snap
but for now you are upright
with some slight skin slumping
a small price to pay
for having it all.

if my words
don't make your stomach hurt
like the feeling of
watching
the first incision
the thick dark icing
pouring out
messy and mesmerizing
nasty and nauseating
then you need another slice

past rows of cookie-cutter houses
the left bike path gives way
to the red metal playground
where my brothers and i lived
our dad chasing us
hiding in the tube of the slide
spending hours on our spaceship
jedis outsmarting darth vader and the dark side

the stretches of field
lace their ways around the street
like the green apple sour belts
we ate until our tongues hurt
watching pick-up games
my brother and his basketball wins
dribbling with his friends
while lemon popsicles dribbled down our chins

the giant lake
filled with brightly colored kois
storks serenely standing out on rocks
i sang to them as if they listened
water rushing into our ears
balancing on a worn-out waterfall
everything man-made
and everything beautiful

the burnished blacktop
not a blemish in sight
no cars barreling down the road
our wheels would glide so silently
racing up and down smooth street
so shiny it hurt your eyes
pedaling and peeling away
if you go fast enough you could fly

the lamppost on the corner
carved into by kids
generations of neighborhood
gone as we grow up
and yet the light was never lost
the pink sky fades to dark
but to revisit and recollect
is just a walk in the park

-an entry from the National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health-

processes protruding
excitatory synapses
cerebral circuits
dendritic differentiation

growth is     s         lo           w.

a complex dance, unfolding of a blueprint; how do we understand this dance?

stress stress stress stress stress learn grow develop stress stress stress stress stress

the brain is sensitive! plastic changes are not all permanent
                                 permanent
                                 permanent

choose...you­r...psychomotor stimulants!
amphetamine
*******
nicotine

choose:
gray or white matter
schizophrenia or drug addiction
ADHD or depression

the brain structures will not be changed;
pathological plasticity = pathological pain

                                                           ­                      not all plasticity is good
just like a sculptor
who creates a statue
with a block of stone
and a chisel
to remove the unwanted pieces

in vivo → cell death