Of Water

I began this life in water.

In the safe, quiet oblivion of a womb...swimming peacefully, unaware of what awaited me on the outside.

Oxygen from Mother's blood flows through my placenta and umbilical cord. I don't breathe in the conventional sense...My lungs are filled with fluid ( not for breathing in-utero) in preparation for birth as I develop and mature. My first breath occurs at birth. In 10 seconds....I breathe. Any longer and things might not be pretty.

My life formally begins.

Placenta...the organ that forms in the uterus during pregnancy and provides a connection between mother and baby, through the umbilical cord.

After breaking this mutually beneficial connection...The world then becomes my placenta and womb. Woe is me.

Now, when I am become birthed...I must learn to breathe on my own.

Co2 and baby's waste products, are also transported back to mother's blood through the placenta and umbilical cord.

I must, after this, grow, learn, mature and be the author of my every bodily function.

While not actively breathing, my lungs are developing and maturing in the womb.

First Breath does not prepare me for the difficult road ahead. I had been happy, where they plucked me from...A blissful place of not knowing.

The baby's first breath occurs...marking the transition to breathing with my own lungs.

Pity my poor lungs. It will be subjected to the putrefaction of human processes of rot and decay, bacteria, and the stinging smoke from the land and human nostrils.

Luckily, in the womb, I practiced for survival.

I felt the first sting of the first slap. A rite of passage for newborns. I had arrived.

"Put me back". I screamed. "I feel the insecurity of a vast and cold existence. Put me back".

Alas. They understand not my alien tongue. I was evolved beyond their narrow understanding of the world from which they had dragged me, unwillingly. I had been immortal.

Once, I had been infinite...ageless...in my other home. Now, slowly, infinity is being drained from my tiny soul. And I knew that the longer I stayed here, the more doomed I would become.

The years passed...I endured...I watched as the world tore itself apart year after year.

Yet, in between the sorrow, beauty prevails...fleeting sometimes. I lived, laughed, loved...endured the hardships, the pain, the shame and the glory of humanity.

In the early years it was not so bad. But age brings with it infirmities too hurtful to the psyche. I watch them...I feel my own aches and pain...and I too, grew old. I said my goodbyes, hugged them as they comforted me...Seeing themselves in later years, saying their own goodbyes...It is an infinite dance of time. We all smile sadly into the now and time to come.

I am slowly fading away...

Into nothingness...Finally---I die.

And Hallelujah!!!

I return from whence I came.

I return HOME! Beyond it all.

Immortal once more!!!