A Spermatozoon
I am one of the billions he created.
My brothers say, “Surely, he made each of us for a purpose. He loves us. We are his children.”
I'm sleeping, Aurora, and I'm dreaming about you. A red sea, breathing beneath us, a sky of pulsing stars joined with jets of light.
“What's it to be, George, what's it to be?”
You'd be like a sharp wriggly hole with fins, produce your own light, and drink volcanos. A living ocean, with a tail that could smack up waves, shoot great geysers up into the sun with your breath. You'd be small and light, float around the sky as easily as in the sea, climb up high and dive back down in the air, no resistance, just drop! Split second down down down, and at the last minute force your body to turn and then glide along the surface, etching ripples into the water.
“We are the stem, George.” You say, “Pick the bloom.”
Why are you so quick to be something, my love? Almost as soon as we unite, we are divided. I have swum my whole life for that stillness. I have fought hard for that peace.
It is a bitter world, Aurora. Too many have died in the hope that the good seed will find you, that our struggles propelled him there. I have no claim on survival, my dear, and nor have you, but we believe it is real, that somehow it can make sense of this.
Footnote: I wrote this for my university's short story competition. It is dedicated to my greatgrandmother, who did indeed lose her entire shtetl and did try to set my grandfather up with a nice Jewish girl until the day he married.
