Eve

EVE

My voice lifts from the throats and settles in the ears and echoes in the minds of all who are.

My instinct is yours. To push and prod, to p1y and protect, to clarify and confuse.

My strengths are yours, as are my weak­nesses. The urges: to nurture and shield, to love, to need, to defend, to attack.

This all comes from me.

It is with tremendous pride and blinding shame that I recognize you, my own.

You, you are the living testament of my choices. And certainly you must believe that I made more than one.

Do not allow yourself to limit me to one strategically professed fable. Force yourself to see what is evident; I am the source that God trusted with the single most treasured gift ... you.

Even that which began with Adam traveled through me and is therefore my gift, my burden, to !?ass along to you.

It was I whom God trusted to cany the seed, to suffer the birth, and to rear

the child.

I cringe at your pain, I lilt at your laughter, I swim in your ambivalence.

It was God's gift, God's burden, passed along to me.

Some have argued that I came from Adam so all gifts are through him. Yet Adam was not asked to offer his rib. It was God's to take and so God did.

When the first delicate creature lived within me God did not remove the rocks. I did not throw myself upon them-or from them. I was, to be certain, not ignorant to the possibility. While this choice was not intriguing, it was not unnoticed.

I kneel in gratitude to God, for the trust this great being has placed in me.

I stand in awe of you, for within you lie all the possibilities that ever were.