the thing about all the cells in your body replacing themselves every seven years is a common misconception, that’s just the average life of all your cells.
which sucks, because i wanted to believe that i am not the version of myself that i was at fifteen, the one who had very strong, wrong opinions on the world.
i wanted to plausibly deny the person i was before, and write
off everyone who knew me then. because they didn’t know ME.
not truly. they had not seen a single cell of who i am now, and
i do not know them. not anymore, anyways. they are names of strangers, with hands and faces that used to know each other. we memorialize each other in something rigid as stone, not admitting its fantasy.
the life expectancy of a bone cell is fifteen years. with that in
mind, there is not a bone in my body that is the same as the
seven-year-old version of myself that was waiting on her own
becoming. there is no part of my body that has seen my grandfather, only bones that recognize his sullied name after the
fact. for now, i still know my mother bone deep, one day there
won’t be a child who did anything to please. with no part
of me connected to her in body or memory, i’m left with stories of a ship with every board replaced.
