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metaphor

Illustration by Lauren Simkin Berke

Mutations

Is it possible to understand the persistent lag in vaccination rates as a function of failed metaphor? That is to say, as a failure of language—the language of data, the language of science, the language of political rhetoric (to name just a few vocabularies)—to meet individuals at their particular coordinates on the social map? The virus and our national response to it has been figured and refigured.

Dearest Eros,

I did this to myself, I know. You are not mine
but come as wind clotted with the end of a season. 
Did you know all a ginkgo’s leaves fall on the same day? 
Sometimes it’s called maiden hair. For its beauty.