We Carry Our Origins within Us

We are salt and water

stung by lightning into life

in the voiceless beginnings

of biological time

kindled nucleotide threads

replicating unthought, unthinking in our harsh salt bath

and when we had grown large

enough, bony enough, breathing

enough to creep from the ocean

we made of our bodies vessels to enclose it

and bring it with us

in the brine of our blood, the solutions of our

sweat and tears, of our urine and semen

and vaginal fluid,

the seawater of our spines.

From our brains swimming in salinity lightning

flashes down the forked tendrils of nerves

to sting our cells, and in this endless animation

of billions of years of algorithmically adapted tissue

we live

and move

and have our being,

awakened worlds of water and salt

surging electric within elastic casings of skin.