Tell me about the heart.
An octopus has three.
Do you remember hide and seek with your brothers and sisters? Hand glued to your mouth as you hid in the closet, giggle breaking loose when the floorboard creaked?
Peregrine falcon siblings role play in the air, one playing the predator, the other the prey.
Do you remember when you fell on your elbow in the playground? When your mother asked you where it hurt and she kissed the spot? When you pointed to the other arm and said it hurt too, just to feel the softness of her touch again?
A joey rides in a mother kangaroo’s pouch for 235 days after birth. Antimicrobial pouch properties protect the baby.
Do you remember waking up to the aroma of pancakes? The promise of chocolate chips nestled in the batter? The way your mother arranged cut strawberries into hearts around your plate, how she never cared for pancakes but made them just for you?
A python can survive six months without food. Its two mandibles spread apart to accommodate large prey and swallow it whole.
We’re nothing without the people who love us.
Baby sea turtles spend zero days with their parents.
Do you remember the nightmares that drove you from bed, stuffed elephant clutched to your thumping chest? The way your mother made room for you under her blanket, how you imagined you were bears tucked safe in their den?
In the presence of danger, some embryonic frogs can hatch themselves early, escaping to safety in six seconds flat.
Early experiences form the fabric of who we are.
I can sew holes with numbers.
Do you remember your mother’s hands when you came home late? How they moved in a tremble from her eyes, red and wild, to her mouth, to her heart and back again? How you felt a vague guilt but were mostly annoyed? How you never appreciated what you had?
The vampire squid spends its life in darkness, two thousand feet below the ocean’s surface. From the tips of its tentacles, it makes its own light.
–
Andrea Lynn Koohi is a writer from Toronto, Canada. Her work appears in a variety of publications, including filling Station, Lost Balloon, Pithead Chapel, The Maine Review, trampset, New World Writing, Ellipsis Zine Nine, and Sunlight Press.