<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
MELAS<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n First your new minted sister, limp,<\/p>\n limp still in her adult skin,<\/p>\n simple sugars-less<\/p>\n run through by red ragged fibres.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Arrowheads of mitochondria,<\/p>\n auburn as her river of hair,<\/p>\n dipped in defects, pierce,<\/p>\n pin her down through the frame of her stand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two decades later, your boy-man brother<\/p>\n thunderbolt-flat, cuts Mum\u2019s clothes to ribbons,<\/p>\n hovers his claw hand on your dinner plate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Charmed and firstborn perfect, you free-fall<\/p>\n on weekend thermals, fracture a leg,<\/p>\n twist a knee, dislocate an arm, in turn.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Organelles flood<\/p>\n glucose to your brain as you inhale, exhale<\/p>\n Earth\u2019s atmosphere, three times over.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Maggie Mackay<\/strong> has published in Sea of Ink<\/em> and Fields of Words<\/em>\u00a0 (www.inkpantry.com<\/a>), in All Write Then\u2019s anthology Still Me<\/em>\u2026(www.pewter-rose-press.com<\/a> ) and in the online magazines, Poetry Scotland, Word Bohemia, Ink, Sweat & Tears<\/em> and The Lake<\/em>. She is currently studying for a Masters in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.<\/p>\n Note: MELAS : Mitochondria, Encephalopathy, Lactic Acidosis and Stroke-Like episodes is a rare inherited and progressive disorder<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MELAS First your new minted sister, limp, limp still in her adult skin, simple sugars-less run through by red ragged fibres. Arrowheads of mitochondria, auburn as her river of hair, dipped in defects, pierce, pin her down through the frame of her stand. Two decades later, your boy-man brother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7102,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7099\/revisions\/7102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}