By Alyssa Gregg

Sometimes I wish I could push my fingers

into someone else’s skull, through

the layers, the membranes of the brain,

and wrap my fingers around their psyche

to pull it out and tease and prod.

I think what would happen first

is a knock to the forehead and

bitter, sharp words that give but

a fleeting impression, a taste

of what lies within the container that

we call one’s mind: the Broca’s Area—

the control center relaying the subconscious

bits and bites of language to the lips,

named for a man who wasn’t even the first

in his field to discover the section of the brain—

that was Marc Dax

—but he couldn’t cut it.

A nineteenth-century Frenchman who

faded into obscurity and a Wiki page that’s

four to five paragraphs at most.

I would read pages on parsing out thoughts, 

conversations—how to open a brain,

read thoughts and intentions

so I don’t feel like I’m floundering.

Expressions and twitches of eyes,

spectral cues that hang over me

and slip through my grasp.

Even four to five paragraphs would be

satisfactory—and I, effervescent.

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Alyssa Gregg (she/her) ‘25 is a television, radio and film major with a women’s and gender studies minor, from northeast Tennessee. She enjoys writing, crocheting, and playing piano in her free time.