Mitosis

By Saanvi Gutta (2023)

The one who came suddenly

and left just as fast.

I thought I’d see you in the future,

but you remained in the past.

The day we met, that day we played

Hopscotch in chalk on a road just paved.

You looked at me, and then I knew,

Whatever I felt, you felt it too.

Down to the bones, the cells, the DNA— 

Just a cytosine and guanine an H-bond away

Attached at the hip, two peas in a pod,

Chromatids in a chromosome with a fate I forgot.

Riding bikes down the hills,

Splashing boots in puddles of rain,

Blowing our breaths into winter chills,

Looking up when I hear you call my name.

A breakup I saw a mile away,

As we drive into a sunset closing the day,

We ignored the signs and let them be,

“I’m near-sighted,” you tell me.

Jumping rope on the sidewalk,

Sleepovers where sleep is for the weak,

Rock-paper-scissors, I won with rock,

And we skipped stones across the creek.

As we learned in biology together,

Mitosis pulls apart birds of a feather.

An Okazaki fragment here, another there,

We were on the lagging strand unaware.

When the jump rope began to fray,

as we lost the fight against sleep,

That time rock lost to paper,

and the pebbles sunk too deep.

Like the bicycle who lost its wheel, 

or the boot no longer a pair,

Our breaths disperse into the cold,

And I look up, but no one’s there.

Interphase was long, but it wasn’t forever

Cell division was enough for cohesion to sever, 

At last the chromosome splits in two,

And now I remember you as someone I knew.