Saturday, March 15, 2014

In This World

In this world, the tiniest life creates you. In tireless work microbes construct you beneath the soil, this quiet and appropriate place to conceive a being. You won’t remember this, but it is how it happens. Above ground, the others are stalking the forest, retrieving their loneliness, their grief. Meanwhile, your pale and riven face is composing itself in the darkness.

When it’s time the others unearth you.  They brush the soil from your vestments, your eyelids, which have yet to open. The hum in your nerves is still incoherent, still dispersed. The microbes that will be you are still grieving as they put you together.

The others carry you to the house, lay you in the bed. It is here you come awake, your eyes fluttering open, a rattle in your throat. Your family is all around, the pain dissolving from their faces as you come into the world.