The Philosopher’s Axe
In a pub somewhere someone is telling
somebody else they’re literally not the same
person they were seven years ago, citing
that thing about cells regenerating every few
years, while, in another pub, somebody claims
that’s a myth based on the average of, say,
the five-day lives of intestinal epithelial cells,
the growth of toenails by one millimetre per month,
the replacement of hippocampal neurons
every twenty to thirty years. But your Achilles
knows you are no Ship of Theseus, no
philosophical conundrum. Ask the scar
at the base of your thumb if it’s still
the same axe. Ask the nick in your heart.
Alison Binney is a poet and English teacher from Cambridge, UK. Her debut pamphlet, ‘Other Women’s Kitchens’, won the Mslexia Pamphlet Competition and was published by Seren Books in 2021.