120 Days
Doctors say, it takes 120 days for our red blood cells to die. It allows them to roam freely, guided by the flowing river of blood into places inside us we haven't visited. It makes us red, on the inside and no matter what colour we are by the surface of our skin, the red blood cells unify us all as one.
1, 2, 3
The red blood cells are being born, small goblets just beginning to understand their role in such a short life span that they are granted. My mother says, I plopped right into the midwife's hands like a plunger pulled with mighty force. My sister was born in eight hours. And all through that time, my mother, she huffed and she puffed into bringing a daughter into this world she couldn't recognize.
10, 11, 12
The red blood cells although small in size but as red as ever, follow their ancestors to the burial ground, the spleen. They mourn the mentors, so alive a few hours ago, now just degraded into Rest in Peace stones, one day giving rise to new descendants.
When my grandmother died, I was not yet familiar with death. It was something my eight year old mind could sum up to be a part of story books. I expected my gran to walk right through the door any second. Just before they took her body to be engrained as though a part of the earth.
20, 21, 22
The red blood cells woke up today, the sunlight of the heart shining upon them. News had traveled around the house about a new kidney's first day. Everywhere cells were celebrating. The red blood cells joined in, spilling oxygen everywhere.
When I was 10, my cousin was born. It was hard to acknowledge someone else after a long period of only seen-loads-of-time faces. Today, she is 10 and finds it hard to make new friends. I tell her, it occurs by beautiful and gradual osmosis, how you come to love someone you never even knew.
117, 118, 119
Today, the red blood cells are waving goodbye. Their souls have flown outward, to a place where only coagulated friendship and bonds exist. But their final journey to the spleen took forever.
Doctors say, it takes 120 days for our red blood cells to die.
I ask them;
How long does it take for them to live?