right now embryo
Last I saw the embryo it contained eight cells. They enlarged it in a photograph and I taped a copy to a wall in my kitchen. Out of those eight cells, It formed an inner and outer layer.
The outer layer right now is becoming the placenta which will feed the embryo for the duration. (Yes: Placenta comes from the Latin word for cake.) The inner layer becomes the human. How wild that the outer part of what is being created is something expendable soon enough but necessary for now. All that energy for a component that will only last nine months.
The inner layer is right now becoming three distinct parts: inner, middle, and outer. The outer will become the skin and nails of the human. The middle layer becomes the muscles and bones. The inner layer becomes the digestive system.
That’s all so wild. Somehow I can appreciate that abstraction of circles and layers more than I can appreciate that for most of the next nine months the human will most resemble a tiny kittycat alien.
