there is no such thing as death or birth

If you cut me open, snipped off an ovary, and sliced it in half, you’d find at least 100,000 beacons of potential—eggs. I was born with them already. Once, I was an egg inside my mother, while she was an unborn child inside my grandmother. We were three generations nested like Russian dolls—but I didn’t know it then. 

How strange, that I, as an egg, was with my mother before she was even born. I was there, in a way, when she watched Star Trek, lost her virginity, played a small role in a high school play.

If I were pregnant with a daughter now, she would come from an egg that once existed inside my mother. That egg, formed inside me but first nestled within her, would have felt the rhythm of her heartbeat, the warmth of her body—even though she’s been gone nearly eight years. That egg was with me the day my mother died. It was there through every argument, every first and last word, every time I got drunk, every time I cried.

How can birth or death be entirely real, in the way we’re told, when a newborn’s essence already existed decades before they took form? I’m not saying it’s reincarnation—only that the threads of life vibrate across time in ways we barely understand.

Each month, as my body discards another egg, I feel a pang—not only for the child I don’t have, but for the slow, cellular letting go of my mother. The mother I pushed away, again and again. The mother who, even now, I carry. The mother I was with before she was born, but didn't try to understand till she was dead. But death and birth may not be entirely real.