Breath & Shadow
Summer 2025 - Vol. 22, Issue 3
In the Belly of the Machine
written by
Madeleine Simmons
I. Initial Imaging
thunk-thunk-thunk.
Gradient coils hammer rhythm
into my vertebrae,
like a god trying to knock
from inside my skull.
The tech says: Hold still.
and I try,
I rehearse stillness.
Pretend to be a photograph.
A girl mid-laugh, forgotten
on the mantle of someone else’s family.
Except the blood doesn’t stop.
The heart still maps its geography.
Systole, diastole, systole,
a metronome against the tunnel wall.
They inject the gadolinium
like a truth serum.
I try to lie still,
but my radial pulse
keeps confessing.
I think about the word magnetic.
I think about attraction.
How even in stillness,
my blood insists on moving.
II. Follow-Up
BZZT. BZZT.
Now I recognize
the frequency range of diagnosis,
The ceiling closes in.
I count the seconds
between magnet bursts.
Each ka-CHUNK
a judgment.
Each whaaa-WHAM
a pronouncement.
I try to leave my body.
Not all the way.
Just enough to become
less here.
To become
the name on the chart,
the shadow in the scan.
I do this by naming the sounds like animals:
Ka-chunk. is the startled bear
ta-ta-ta-ta. is a woodpecker inside bone
humMMMMMMMM is the cicada chorus
when August never ends.
I become less flesh,
more image.
Less subject, more site.
The MRI doesn’t blink,
but I do,
invisible on the scan.
III. Comparative Imaging
I’m no longer scared
just practiced.
I know the cold
will bite the same spots.
I know they will offer
a panic button
like faith.
They never say
what they’re looking for.
Just what they hope
not to find.
I am still learning
how to shrink without moving.
How to become a ghost
that still bleeds.
THUM-thum. THUM-thum.
The sound of me
trying not to be me.
I fold smaller this time.
The machine forever
shrinking.
The walls learn my name.
The table hums beneath
my spine like it’s counting
the seconds
until I vanish.
The light above flickers.
I pretend
that’s what will save me.
The report will read:
“No acute findings.”
As if absence is relief.
As if the machine didn’t
memorize me,
cell by cell,
just to forget.
Madeleine Simmons is a writer, educator, and poet from Southern California whose work explores chronic illness, neurodivergence, and inherited memory. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Wordgathering, Inlandia, Curious Publishing, and was named a finalist in the 2025 Misfit Poetry Prize from Frontier Poetry. She teaches English at Chaffey College and holds an MA in English and Writing Studies. You can find more of her work on @bingoishername.