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’17 Forensic Ways I Know You’

D18S51, There is no-one like you. There is a 1 in a quintillion chance of there being someone like you, but still not you. I would know, with every sense I would know
D21S11, I could pick the bouquet of your sweaty t-shirt from a line-up of sweaty t-shirts
D3S1358, Who else would naturally select a Charles Darwin Valentine’s card?
TH01, The way I know it was you who contaminated the crime scene of my birthday cake
D16S539, Those improbable double-jointed knees. You could limbo under a komodo dragon
D2S1338, Above your aqua grey eyes, that high-brow, eyebrow scar from a far-flung hardback book
D22S1045, By your plectrum strumming, octave spanning hands
SE33, Your l337 skills are sick, that’s what you’d tell me
D10S1248, Your place on the spectrum, towards the blue, a warm summer blue—mostly—with a storm beyond the visible we try to keep at bay
FGA, I could pull your dreams from a reel of nightmares
D8S1179, When asked how our blackbird sings, you would answer Buenos Dias with the exact inflection
Amelogenin, You are my Fitzwilliam Darcy–I am not laughing at you
vWA, From your fingerprints—dust me down
D19S433, The graphology of your Dorian Gray handwriting, forever 11 years old
D2S441, From your perfect recall of dialogue. In our dotage I look forward to Lizzie Bennet flying the Millennium Falcon, I should not consider myself quitting that sphere
D1S1656, I know you might only recognise twelve unique things in me, that’s cool
D12S391, Ten would be fine. Less than eight and I don’t know you at all

Ginny Saunders is a Poetry School student and writes poetry and prose. She currently has a film being made of a poem for the film issue of Magma.

‘This poem was written in response to an assignment on the recent online course, Test Patterns, tutored by Tania Hershman. We were invited explore and play with scientific language and names. I chose the names of precise genetic markers which are analysed to determine a DNA fingerprint used in forensics. The poem contrasted these with the imprecise way we know, or think we know, someone close to us and the traits that make them unique.’

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Image Credits:

Thomas Hawk