Something smaller than a wren was in one of the leyland cypruses this morning, the skeleton of trees draped with grapevines and hung with empty cocoons. Bagworms build their homes with the death of their hosts. I wonder how many things have died on my watch.

        My high school sweetheart texted me yesterday. He works on a farm now. He found an egg at work and was looking for identification help - mottled cream rounding the length of one knuckle to another (hand for scale.) American Woodcock. He moved the egg out of the field “somewhere safer.” It took me an hour to figure out how to tell him he killed it. I lost his number when I switched from one phone to the next, but I’d recognize those nailbeds in a different life. His nickname, when we were teenagers, was “the prettiest girl in school.” And he was. All round eyes and button nose. Long silky hair. His other nickname was “brother,” being 3 years junior to the previous prettiest girl in school - his sister who he to this day models his life after. I always wanted a brother.

        Human chimerism is the result of twin embryos merging in the womb. I forget where I first heard about it. Maybe on the Discovery channel. Maybe on TLC. As a child, I watched a lot of television. This was an age where irregularities within the human body were billed as shocking fodder for daytime television viewers. An interview of women with bicornuate uteri was promoted on The Tyra Show with the phrase “5 women. 10 vaginas.” I use the phrase often. I’m still waiting for someone to get the reference.

        I knew there was something different about me. I watched these shows looking for words that matched my difference, believing that every oddity would coalesce into a single diagnosis if I found the right name. Human chimerism seemed right. Two in one. My face was (is) asymmetrical. I was a girl. I played with the boys. At one point, I made a tally comparing the boy things about me and the girl things. I ate paper (boy). I played with dolls (girl). I never told anyone. Part of me knew it sounded ridiculous, that I was once two. That I ate myself in the womb. That I carry my brother in me. But it only had to make sense to me.

        In high school I had to get a cyst removed. A doctor explained what a cyst was like I was a child (I was a child.) Hair and skin trapped inside me, growing over time, getting irritated. There he was: my brother, my other self, the boy that I merged with, the being I carried all these years after we fused at our coccyx. The surgery to remove him was brief. The wound festered for months.