Bruce A. Mason, Contributor to Moving, for You: A Tribute to Empathy

Just in Time

He was prematurely exiled simply for outgrowing the womb. Ripped violently from the glutinous pod of his rent-controlled studio, the first sights he found were unfamiliar and terrifying. The bleeding filament attaching him to his home cut from his stomach and tossed from reach, he looked up at the large alien faces smiling down upon him and squealed. Unable to awake from this nightmare, he closed his eyes and found his breathe. “It will only be a matter of time before I wake from this dream,” he thought to himself, “only a matter of time.”

We are tethered to our mom’s survival to safeguard our own after we are born. Snipped from the umbilical cord, we are removed from their bellies yet dependent on them nonetheless. Before we know it, we’re crawling then walking and talking then running. Running fast and far away from home in the spirit of independence. Waving our freak flags of freedom, we chant rather cacophonously, “No More Womb! No More Womb! No More Womb!” And then we pull the emergency parachute cords and eject ourselves into the sea of life.

Discovery and wonder illuminate the reefs through which we swim. We live, we love, we learn. Years pass by and we grow older. Then slowly one by one those we know begin to grow sick, let go and die. Before some time, if we’re lucky, we will still be here when our mom’s time is up. It is then that those umbilical cords rematerialize and tether us again to their being, their blood and ultimately their last breath.

We are solitary ships who sail from our homelands only to return one day to pay homage to our life-bearer, our ancestry, the goddess of whom all we once were.

Calligraphy by Amorosa5