Hard water

“[Estrogen appears] in our drinking water
primarily in the form of oestradiol... These hormones
enter the water supply chiefly through the oral
contraceptive pill which women excrete in their
faeces and urine."
                 – Water for Health

 

i
There’s something in the water; dancing
through the sewers. A fizzing brain
whose neural pathways

​

                        fuse around some
grand chorale. We all partake
by passing through the same
routines –

​

        the daily mess of life. If not cocaine,
excreted from the ulcerated bowels
of city workers on the pull,

​

        then estrogen from birth control
grows thick within our veins. Its wiry roots
embedded deep; augmenting, swelling

        breasts of bearded blokes who sip
on IPAs. Some people say this kind of thing
that joins us all together

        has been lost. I’m not so sure.
I think our bodies are like circuits crossed
in vast depressive systems. Lumen

        scarred by pesticides. Drains
that gurgle low, collective hymns.
The rhythm of the city worn
within our DNA.

ii
Though birth rates plummet, at least the trout
who skirt the reedy edge of tributaries,

find rates of melancholia subside.
Citalopram that’s filtered through
their gills – the runoff from the scummy
Thames – an unexpected gift.

​

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Fergal O’Dwyer is a writer and musician based in Oxford. They are interested in how the internal world within our bodies shapes what we perceive as the external world around us. In an age of profound anxiety, our health, desires, and lived environment seem constantly under threat. They ask how can we still find beauty in such an existence?