In Utero

In Utero
by Daddy

You will soon awaken, but
For now you exist out of time
And space.

Who you are has been determined
By genetic inheritance and random combination:
Your laugh, your smile,
The colour of your hair, the sparkle in your eyes,
Your emotional disposition and intellectual capacity.
Characteristics determined in that instant of procreation,
Realized through nine months of growth and maturation,
Instructions embedded in strands
Of tightly-coiled serpentine deoxyribonucleic acid.

Manifest destiny suspended in space,
A soul traveller adrift in the universe,
Preparing to disembark upon a shore yet unknown to you,
A space/time traveller approaching your event horizon.
A belief in reincarnation would compel you to ask, presciently,
"where will I be reborn?"

You cannot know what awaits you ex utero:
A small family dressed in skins and huddled in a cave next to a meagre fire?
The warmth of an Iroquois longhouse, surrounded by extended family?
A Zulu family in South Africa speaking comforting words in Kwazulu?
An aristocratic manor in 19th-century France?
Or, an Arab-Canadian family eager to meet you?

Megan, zero-hour approaches.
We choose where you will be loved, but
You choose when you will emerge,
When you grapple space and time firmly with two tiny white-knuckled hands, crying
"I am here!"