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Indefinite Detention

By Aimee Murphy

Honorable Mention, Poetry, Create | Encounter 2024


A cell block for these “clumps of cells;”

I guess it’s fitting, in a way,

since the little bits we’re made of

(yes, cells) were actually named after the rows on rows of tiny rooms men were confined to {pray}.


Tiny vials, petri dishes, straws:

These little ones (Attempts from parents at Multiplying, but now)

Held

(by the thousands) “in the glass.” (And that’s just in one freezer, 90 cubic feet, somehow.)


Vulnerable humans stuck in refrigerators:

A trope out of a comic book scene.

“But they’re just clumps of cells,” we’re told.

 “It doesn’t matter if they’re starving (for love, for life), alone, and cold.”


And I’m reminded of the fact that

Once

in all of our lives

We, too were practically microscopic, A gem of life unfolding from the first {chemical fusion}

Multiplying, growing so fast it mystifies,

forming our bodies (too small for human eyes).

We all were once a clump of cells this small. But we’ve been

Held

in the womb,

Held

in our parents’ arms.


These little ones, meanwhile, are imprisoned,

Held

in a prison on ice;

Each unable to grow, unable to live

their one

precious, unrepeatable

Life.


Frozen there, awaiting ransom. Awaiting (you?), awaiting (me?),

Awaiting a chance to be free.



Artist Statement:

This poem attempts to grapple with the reality that there are over one million embryonic humans currently stuck in freezers around the U.S. due to the grotesquely unregulated fertility industrial complex. Tying together the concept of justice for the incarcerated and justice for the preborn, this piece draws the reader in to remember their own origins, that “everyone you know was once an embryo,” and that every living human deserves to be loved and respected and given a chance to grow in the context of a family.

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