Cynthia Marie Hoffman
MRI MACHINE
Strapped inside this bright rocket, you are a spirit ready to be launched toward the light. A technician watches through the window. A wire goes into your ear through which her voice arrives. The robotic dial clocks the years you’ve lived in pain. Lie still. You’ve been good. You’ve persevered. The hum and snap of magnets turns a mechanical halo around your brain. Music blooms from the end of the wire. A child sings a song that will play in your head for months, tangling in the nub of disquiet deep inside your neck. Nothing changes. You will tense your shoulders just as always, until the birds perched there are bound into your fascia and cannot fly away. They will sing the song of worry that accompanies you to your grave. The real one. The one you do not come out of as you do today, sliding back into the fluorescence of the examination room, where a hand now clasps you by the wrist to help you up.