by Cecilia Kennedy

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When the kya, kya, he, he, shoosh, shoosh labor-breathing ended, a tiny thing entered this world on a string. Nurses had to pull her down from the ceiling. I never even got a chance to hold her.

“It’s rare,” the doctors said, “but it happens,” and they rattled off something about the displacement of oxygen in a pair of human lungs and chromosomes and genes and splices of things, but in the end, the outcome was clear: my child would float through the world.