“[Michael] Skinner’s own research in animals suggests changes to the epigenome, a swirl of biological factors that affect how genes are expressed, can be passed down through the generations.” — “A Painful Legacy,” by Andrew Curry in Science (19 July 2019), Vol 365, Issue 6450, pp. 212-215.

Kids don’t have to be traumatized

To learn to carve their lives around fear

Hurt is a trickster hijacker

Interloping on reproduction when RNA transcribes DNA

But here’s the price of knowing:

A hand in the hurting —

Shattering the lives of small brown mice

A mother

Suffocated in a plastic tube

Then dropped in cold water (i.e., waterboarded)

Next returned to her offspring

Her body trembling

Eyes trapped in a frozen snare of dissociation

Everyone knows on some level Human = Mouse

This is the deep history wisdom of indigenous peoples

Who used metaphor to create similitude

Before labs, science, DNA

Became how humans discover

The truth of who we are

But can sncRNA explain how seeing with heart light

was replaced with observing through calculated harm?

Like a cash register

The data of despair

Entices with promise

Of profit [Prescriptions]

And some change

So we progress:

Just a mouse.

Just a species.

Just a forest.

Just a planet.