Real Americans

by Rachel Khong

Aren’t we lucky? Our DNA encodes for innumerable possible people, and yet it’s you and I who are here—winners in a stupefying lottery. We came at the exact right moment, a blip in the hundred million centuries of the universe: the Earth inhabitable, not yet engulfed by the sun, but not only molten magma, inhospitable to life. The planet cooled and water formed; it was able to hold an atmosphere. And in this place, on this small blue rock, innumerable miracles: redwoods, computers, stingrays, pianos, you and me.