Babies have gills when they’re purple in the womb-dark. They’re like little fantastical mercreatures, not quite human, far from finished. They exist suspended in liminal water space, so they need gills to breathe. I picture my own as having been the angriest pink little jaggedy slits, bright as gooey papercuts on either side of my neck. We cannot keep our gills, though. The world outside is colder, thinner. Breathing there requires sputtering. Mouths gasping, flared nostrils, that sort of thing. Babies are stripped of their primordial gills and learn to survive without. The papercuts zip
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