one time he and i were sitting in bed and i said “where do you feel stuff?” and he said “what do you mean” and i said, “here is anxiety” and pointed to my bottom left rib where the spiders start. he pointed to his throat. “it’s here for me.”
i keep anger in my breastbone, he holds it in his hands. i feel sadness on my shoulders, he feels it in his lungs.
we play this game until we come to love, and i realize that i am terrified (jugular vein) of what might come. what if it is not the same. what if he feels it somewhere else, what if it is just a flash fire, not the slow burn, what if it is congealing in one place instead of radiating, i try to change topics, flight response (sternum)
he takes my hands in his and puts them over his ribs and says, “everywhere, everywhere, like a sun is trying to escape me, like i am being consumed and you are filling up where used to be empty.” i say, “don’t be ridiculous humans are 99% empty space,” i nervous laugh (spiders down spine), he holds his gaze with me.
“everywhere,” he repeats.
Tag: lit
Two-dad babies could soon be a reality
For the first time, scientists have shown that it’s possible for two people of the same sex to create a baby, without the need for outside egg or sperm donation. The most obvious benefits would be for homosexual couples who want to have a child together, but the method could also help couples who have been affected by infertility.
The team, from Cambridge University in the UK and Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, built on previous work where baby mice were successfully raised from mouse skin cells that had been converted into what’s known as primordial germ cells – the precursors of egg and sperm cells. It was a real struggle to replicate the process using human biological matter, but now they’ve finally managed to create new human primordial germ cells using skin cells from five human donors and stem cell lines from five human embryos.
“We have succeeded in the first and most important step of this process, which is to show we can make these very early human stem cells in a dish,” lead researcher and professor of physiology and reproduction at Cambridge, Azim Surani, told Lois Rogers at The Sunday Times.
“We have also discovered that one of the things that happens in these germ cells is that epigenetic mutations, the cell mistakes that occur with age, are wiped out. That means the cell is regenerated and reset, so while the rest of the cells in the body have aged and contain genetic mistakes, these ones don’t. We can’t say no mutations are passed on, but mostly it doesn’t happen.”
A pioneer in the field of non-traditional reproduction technology, Surani was also involved in the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.
The key to their research ended up being a gene called SOX17, which didn’t seem to have any effect on the mouse research, so was largely ignored. But the team finally realised that SOX17 was actually crucial to process of ‘reprogramming’ that the human skin cells had to undergo to become primordial germ cells, and they reported their discovery on Christmas day last year.
Now, they’re confident that the process, which has been described in the journalCell, could be used to make healthy babies in as little as two years’ time. Although Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem-cell biology and developmental genetics at the National Institute for Medical Research, who was not involved in the work, thinks it’s too soon to be putting a due date on it. “[The stem cell breakthrough] will be important for understanding the causes of infertility and for the treatment of it,” he told Rogers at The Sunday Times. “It is probably a long way off, but it would be a way for people who have had treatment for conditions such as childhood leukaemia, which has left them infertile, to have children of their own.”
Of course, something like this is bound to get caught up in ethical concerns, as did the research that resulted in the birth of a girl using the DNA of three parents. But Surani’s team point out that reproduction is not the only potential use for this technique. He told Ian Sample at The Guardian that because the cells are wiped clean of the genetic mutations they had accumulated as skin cells, they could be used to better understand the changes our cells undergo as we age. “This could tell us how to erase these epigenetic mutations,” he said. “Epigenetics is used to regulate gene expression, but in age-related diseases, these changes can be aberrant and misregulate genes.”
As Lovell-Badge said, it’s much too early to know if this is the medical breakthrough that will change the way we reproduce, but it sure does feel like the not-so-distant future will offer a whole lot more options to the kinds of people who are struggling to have a baby today. And ethical arguments aside, that’s a pretty wonderful thing.
via ScienceAlert
Everyone’s talking about how this is amazing for homosexual couples and forgetting that this could be groundbreaking for trans people as well! I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible
Are gods really gods if no one believes in them anymore?
Zeus takes walks in the rain and tries to talk up joggers in central park. When they bolt, or only return his advances with polite smiles that look like fence posts too high for even him to jump, he sighs. He tells them he is a god, and his words echo back to him, accompanied by laughter. No one believes him
He picks up his wife, who might be his sister in this time, in a beat up car with a beautiful flame job, Hera is a marriage counselor with peacock feather bags under her eyes, her advice falls on her own deaf ears as her jealous eyes roam over every girl they pass, and she is right to. She knows this. She has always known.
Poseidon’s hands are rough and calloused, he raises cargo too heavy for a man his age, the young ones say. He laughs his fisherman’s laugh, all depths and riptide, because no one should be his age. He reminds himself he is one of the lucky ones, he gets to be around what he loves. He may not have his dominion any more, but salt water and sun still weather his face.
Hades stalks the streets at night, women cross the street to avoid him, and he smiles with his needle-teeth, they are right to. This winter he is without a bride, and he still wants to usher souls into the afterlife, the pistol hangs heavy in his pocket, his tongue glints gold, the coin to pay his Charon, his most loyal employee. He brings knives to gunfights and guns to fistfights, he stands with his arms out like their new God, these fickle humans, he welcomes the bullets. He dares them to kill him. They try.
Ares and Athena spit curses laced with whiskey from across dive bar floors, they are moving human pawns across a chessboard. They were strategists before they were gangsters, but it doesn’t matter now.
Apollo sings in a nightclub, his crooning voice from a forgotten time. He has his sister’s blood under his fingernails, from stitching up wound after wound, Artemis forgets she is not invincible anymore. He sings about the moon and wonders where she is, picking a fight with some would-be rapist, maybe it’s Zeus. It’s probably Zeus. Again.
Dionysus drinks away their shared pain, dealing LSD in dark alleyways, he whispers sweet promises and his followers believe him, he was human once and he can be again, like wine, he knew nothing so sweet could have lasted forever. Icarus sidles up to his side, asking if he’s got anything that can make you feel like you can fly. In this life, he is a junkie, and Daedalus watches with ancient, sad eyes. Icarus is melting and Dionysus is letting him.
Hestia sits by the hearth and waits for her family to come home. And she listens while they all curse their immortality. She shakes her head slow and clicks her tongue, I know, my darlings, I know.
Are gods really gods if no one believes in them anymore?
Does it matter?
Marissa Dakin, 2015 (via roseghoul)
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