Flashing Palely in the Margins
Ode and Burgeonings.
The running joke is that the cells in the human body replace themselves every seven years, so if you see someone you haven’t seen in a decade, you don’t have to say hi because you’re both completely different people.
(It’s funnier when someone actually funny tells the joke, I promise.)
The science might not be exact, but the sentiment rings true: every morning, we awake as different people, with different experiences, different perspectives, different hopes and dreams for the day ahead.
Aquí estamos al fin frente a frente,
nos hemos encontrado,
no hemos perdido nada.
Nos hemos recorrido labio a labio,
hemos cambiado mil veces,
entre nosotros la muerte y la vida,
todo lo que traíamos
como muertas medallas
lo echamos al fondo del mar,
todo lo que aprendimos
no nos sirvió de nada:
comenzamos de nuevo,
terminamos de nuevo
muerte y vida.
Y aquí sobrevivimos,
puros, con la pureza que nosotros creamos,
más anchos que la tierra que no pudo extraviarnos,
eternos como el fuego que arderá
cuanto dure la vida.
“We have felt each other lip to lip, we have changed a thousand times; we begin again, we end again.”
Who I am today is not who I am tomorrow; who you were yesterday can not be who you are right now. And so we explore each other again, and always learn something new.