An Alchemist’s Guide to Making Insulin

It does not have to be precious;
let’s create matter out of nothing.

Let’s turn to this matter of nothing:
the diabetic body lives off pinpricks and needles.

My mother taught me how to use pins and needles;
now I embroider the edges of my bruises.

I have tried to put my pancreas back together with stitches
but there is no spell to heal a diabetic body.

So a mother takes up in her arms a body
borne into inherited suffering.

This magecraft monopoly is turning us back into nothing;
life does not have to be so precious.

Previously published in Centripetal.
Poetry and photography by HJH.