What Stayed Near by Being Pushed Away

They reached for regenerative medicine once the neurites lengthened— a materials breakthrough, as if charge geometry were already a therapy with a name.

What was already there: a thread that caps itself when the monomer is gone, and starts again when more arrives; a small positive stretch that anchors to the neuron; negative lengths, repelled, that cannot leave— held near in a fast tapping state. No receptor motif in the sequence. Calcium about fourfold after a week. Random mixed charge did nothing of the kind.

The leftover is both— what grew when the sequence asked for nothing, and what stayed near by being pushed away.

I take what stayed near by being pushed away.