according to a segment on Radiolab today.
And not for days or weeks, says the biologist to the host,
but decades. Until my own death.
They’re not sure what you’re doing there—
if you shield me from the worst diseases
or lead me to them faster. But you’re there,
the irritant if not the pearl of you.
Somewhere in my liver, the lobes of my lungs—
you, aborted in my 20s,
still hang around. Maybe in the warp
of my fingers from arthritis. Or maybe they’d swerve
worse without you.
Your dad is there, too—a man I haven’t seen
in half a lifetime, who I’ll also never lose.
And you, unfortunate half-moon, who settled
in my fallopian when I was 37.
Wrong place, wrong time—is there any doubt you’re my spawn?
I nearly bled out in an ambulance before I knew
you existed.
To know you’ve been there all this time,
and I’ve missed it.
Have you met your siblings, the two who survived?
You’d like them, I think.
They’re the murmur in my heart that keeps me up at night.
And the calm that comes down
like a blanket on me.
