Embryo

You are trained to look ahead:
Picture bright eyes blinking morning light,
The body soft and warm against your own.

When was the last time you thought of your self
Before you were a ‘he’ or ‘she’
Before your body looked like what you see when you think “Human”,
When you lived cocooned within your mother?

They are everywhere in summertime:
Otherworldly larval things, tadpoles, caterpillars.
You, too, were once as foreign to yourself as they will be.

Now it lives inside of you: a sexless grub-like embryo
that twitches and pulses.
Its body is not like what you see when you think “Human”
But your body, too, once twitched and pulsed,
A sexless, grub-like embryo

Cocooned within your mother as it is cocooned within you.