Happiness

By Evelyn Blackburn, circa 1950


I am floating; suspended in fluid, I  am warm and full and happy, I want for nothing.
I turn, stretch, kick, from sheer delight.
I am alive, the most supremely content human in existence. I do not cerebrate, I absorb sensations, and there are no unpleasant ones. I utilize oxygen but I do not respire. I receive the most ample nourishment
yet I neither masticate nor swallow.
One thing there is which never happened before. This recurrent impression of tautness, surely it should not be, it has been occurring with regularity and increasing frequency, as the the wall of my domain were tightening, closing in, as though ( I must be mistaken) I were being forced out.
But there can be no "out"-what is it? I will not be ejected, help me, help, I am being propelled now through a moist red canal,  save me, something of hard bone and flesh is holding my head!
By my feet I am swung aloft, my lungs inflate to contain my first breath.I release it in a mingled scream of rage and terror as I perceive my tragedy.
This is the World, and I have entered it, I have just been born.