If you have ever stared suspiciously at the stars,

you have wondered what it feels like to be pregnant.

Both states stammer in the face of other-worldliness.

In the suddenly quiet corner of the room,

the run-on sentences of scientists, priests, and atheists all stutter to silence the same.

There is a human being hiccuping in my belly.

And there is nothing,

nothing,

that can follow, from one side to the other, the leap of that crevasse.

Only silence

can respectfully touch the feet of that fact.

There is a human being hiccuping in my belly.

The statement itself tremors.

No amount of repetition stills it.

For a tiny season in my human life,

and one yet permanently obscured to all males on this planet,

I simultaneously house

and surrender to

the involuntary flutter

of a miniature practicing diaphragm.

Tiny perfect practice grasps for air.

That will one day become

sighs, gasps, laughs, snores, heaves

and even a last, subsiding, breath.

But will mostly spend the 86400 seconds of every day

unconsciously streaming and stringing one moment

to the next.

Existence hiccups to life.