It’s Not Always in the Exact Same Spot

Showing him my brain was an accident. I meant to hand him a coffee mug as requested, but then I pried my head apart like a bear trap and was tugging it out over the apple bowl and the wild magnolias he brought home from the farmers’ market.

It was soggy but firm and shaped like a helmet and I didn’t know why that surprised me, “didn’t know” being relative for someone in this circumstance. It’s not like I was expecting to find a synapse blocked by the word bunting or cul-de-sac and say “aha, here’s the problem!” and remove it. But I also wanted to check. My man was a psychiatrist and he said nothing I haven’t seen before. I said that couldn’t possibly be right. Did I look ridiculous with my head like this? No, I did not look ridiculous with my head like this. He said he’s told me that he’d never try to analyze me without my consent because he would never be pushy about my internalized resistance to both articulating my needs and saying no and I said I’m not asking you to not do anything.

We put the brain on a sheet of newspaper and searched for the neural pathway for fear—he was pretty sure it was in the amygdala—trying to estimate location without pushing on the fissures, the tight folds. Then it started to seep through the real estate section so he lifted it up (which caused my leg to fling once, but nothing else), let the blood crawl down his arms.

He turned it over and over by the window, whispering, It must be in here somewhere, while its pink paled into something more raw.

We didn’t have a plan if we found it anyway, so it was no big deal to stop searching. I didn’t want something else to get rewired by accident. He agreed and said There’s a common phrase about the-devil-you-know.

Before we put it back in I could see what I’d always heard about the color of brains insofar as I’d ever heard anything about the color of brains. Under the flecks of blood tissue it did have a grey-brown tint, like the island rocks we climbed last fall when it was misty but not cold, and when I needed to go slower in my too-slick shoes, he waited for me.

Nadia Prupis has written for Gone Lawn, FIVE:2:ONE Magazine, The Portland Phoenix, Dispatch Magazine, and other outlets. She obtained her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine, where she was the creator and editor of the art and literary magazine FEM.