Born out of substance into metaphor, we carry the absence of light. These words will not reclaim the time when every hunger had its nipple. There was once a heaven without mother or father, without sibling, without self. Long before the first bones ripen, before the leap of synapse when the brain admits itself, this flower climbed out of the dark for no reason but to blossom. Six Weeks Deep in the thick red blue cranberry bog the fetus knows a juicy existence.
Every pore is open, sipping a delicious wine.
Whatever wish travels through the cortex is answered by physical joy. But the fetus wants more than this, the fetus wants separateness. The elastic walls of your room stretch around the instrument that swims through your thigh. You reach for the hook with your first shock of conscious thought. Before the storm, before the purple clouds split open, spilling juice onto the earth, the sky is heavy and urgent, trees hold their leaves still, animals dig deeper burrows, and birds dart between branches into their nests.