There’s a little creature inside me, six centimeters from head to tail. Its heart beats, it has a face, a brain, hands the size of lentils, complete with five fingers on each. We got a grainy black and gray glimpse of it today.

It lay in its warm lair inside me, hand near its mouth, opening and closing its tiny jaw. Its back arched, showing a delicate ribcage, transparent skin covering a quick pulse. A skinny leg kicked, unfelt yet by me. The probe on my belly moved to show the two hemispheres of the cranium, and the face, odd and skeletal and seeming to grin. The tech tried to provoke it to move, to show the back of its neck so she could measure its thickness. She prodded at me, and the creature bounced a little, then obligingly squirmed.

Five weeks ago, we looked upon this creature and saw a little peanut, totally formless except for a few beating heart cells and shadows of limb buds. Now it has bones, joints, organs, fingernails, a stomach. All that endless eating I’ve been doing has amounted to this little twitching being no larger than a mouse. We will see it again in two months and be able to use a gender pronoun after that. By then it will be regularly poking its toes into my bladder.

I think about it sometimes when I listen to this Spoon song (which is a cover). It took me several listens to this tune back in 2006 before I realized what he was singing about.

“Me and the Bean”

My eyes are opening again
I see you as you’re marching in
I’ll bring you cover when you’re cold
You’ll bring me youth when I grow old

Do you remember when you were small
How everybody would seem so tall
I am your shadow in the dark
I have your blood inside my heart