Vestigiality // Poetry by Elisha Pidcock

Stefano Pollio

Elisha Pidcock is a neuroscience student and creative who writes about feminism, motherhood, and the metaphysical for Boshemia and Boshemia Magazine.

Moving on

Is a notion I haven't mastered.

I've spread myself between

All the people who have been close to my heart.

The pieces of myself which I have doled out happily

Have become like vestigial appendages,

Which once served a purpose crucial to my existence

But are now non-functional remnants;

Memories like noncoding DNA: pseudogenes

Present only as a testament

To the convergent evolution of my consciousness;

The way with which previous iterations of myself have been phased out over time;

Analogous functions which were left behind

As the rest of me grew

And for them no longer found use.

I have spent my life searching for pieces which make me feel whole,

Never knowing they were always within me.

Moving on means surgery;

The amputation of my vestigialities.

But the pieces of myself which I have doled out happily

Will still be

Phantom limbs