Evolution

Weeks ago they were cells. And now your babies are the size of grapes until Monday when they become kumquats, feet and hands pronounced, tail no longer. This is where we all begin, big bang and BOOM -- life emerges from the wreckage of exploded stars.

It's a miracle every time, even in sickness. Even in fear and worry and doubt. There is a comfort knowing that these feelings haven't changed since humankind began, the unfathomable stirring of invisible beginnings. That everywhere and always women have pressed their faces against the same questions, harvesting hope and love with merely a touch and faceless dreams of bodies under miraculous construction. We are the lives of shape-shifters.

Every day equals ten million years until the cells become fish and the fish become frogs and the frogs wake up one morning with fingers, toes, a face -- tiny minds open, carrying with them every potential joy in the world. And fear and worry and doubt, yes. But not now. Not yet. In the beginning there is only peace and the thump of heartbeats, opening of eyes, symmetry.

I cannot feel them move but that doesn't mean that they aren't dancing. Together like partners, separate like individuals, moving.

Slowly they grow at the speed of stars and soon they will hang on the light of their exit, slither out of water and onto land, in and out of rooms on all fours, walking upright side by side until they're running in different directions...

...their hands full of the fruit they were once compared to when I sat down to write this post.

GGC