Her ribs

“Where did the first mama come from?” you asked from the backseat. “From another baby?” you continued to puzzle.

“That’s a good question,” I paused to buy some time.

As the light turned green, I pulled forward with, “Well, some people think she came from a fish. Some people think she came from a bone. Either way, it’s pretty wild that any of us are here.”

When I was little, I wasn’t offered open-ended amazement. I was told that women came from part of a man. That she was gifted breath to help him but instead she conspired with a snake to trick him into eating fruit. That she existed solely for men’s company, but her poor choices just made his life harder.

Now grown, I eat fruit, guiltless. Each day I try to make myself whole, something I didn’t know I could do when I was smaller, when I thought I came from just a part of another. I am learning to exist to help myself, and the babies that I grew under my ribs. Just as the first mama did. Something no man, no matter how many ribs he has to spare, could ever do.