primatology

“Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” 

- Elizabeth Stone

Most people use this quote to describe a sense of extreme fragility

the risk of having something so tender and so pure

exposed to the random violences of the world.

But when i watch my daughter ride her tricycle in the kitchen

waving to me with half an oatmeal raisin cookie in her hand

rolling around the room 
trailing crumbs across the floor

her blue sparkly skirt twirling with her legs

i am not afraid for this outside of my body heart

i am simply enthralled by its fearless oddity.

This other heart of mine is inimitable, random, 
amused by the infinity of places to go
and the so manyness of the ways to get there.