My Brain

by Sara Jaffe

My brain, my little slug. I need to get to your switchboard more often, I need to flash-clean your wires. With a q-tip, some aloe? My brain, my ally, my poor, porous pet. My misery and mentor, my doorstep cousin. I love you, and the world treats you so inordinately. My full frontal interface, my poor cousin. My talented brain. My depreciation. My brain who exercises. My stiff comprehension, my attitudes. My brain, my politeness. My wobbly chair. I bronze you and beat you in alternate measure, I feed you comp days. My poor brain. You like the radio. You like hard breeze, cool static. You know yoga is beside the point. I’m sorry for all the false starts, the abnegations. Every day, for you, is a three-card monte. Every day is like fricassee. My starry-eyed cousin. My sometime alibi. Grand gestures mean nothing without some real body behind them.

Sara Jaffe

Sara Jaffe's fiction has appeared, most recently, in Paul Revere's Horse, matchbook, and Weekday. She is a founding editor of New Herring Press and lives in Portland, OR.