AMYGDALA
It’s happening! That maddening patterning—it’s happening!
Do you hear it? Do you see it? Everything’s blackening!
This is the end! Oh, the fear—see the demon drawing near!
See now how he sneers! How his shadows loom and leer!
PREFRONTAL CORTEX
My dear, need we remain in fear?
Perhaps it is not so severe?
AMYGDALA
No! I fear it—I feel it! We’ve been here before!
This drumming dread in my pit—I can’t take it anymore!
And these voices and these noises seep like poison to my core!
PREFRONTAL CORTEX
Oh, do not be so quick to crack.
Is there more here we can unpack?
Step back and see beyond the black?
AMYGDALA
So what—you want us to just let it go?
But what else can I trust—What else do I know?
PREFRONTAL CORTEX
I know. This is no easy sight.
But you are more than fight-or-flight.
These ghosts who keep you steeped in fright…
What do they look like in the light?
HIPPOCAMPUS
… Later that day, old Amy asked for new neurons
(And I could never deny a desire to rewire).
Now I don’t know how exactly she respun her strings,
Rethreading the tapestries that tell her tale,
But what I remember plainly is this:
The next time Visual Cortex showed us those same shadows,
We were all faintly taken aback—
Strangely, they seemed
Neither nearly as tall—
And neither nearly as black.
— Umbel
