By JV Genova
Frothy spit swirled in the bottom of the small plastic bottle, my tiny little spit bubbles popping slowly as sunlight filtered in through the slats of the window blinds, producing little rainbows on the translucent bubbles while I bent over the bottle and watched my saliva swirl, shine, and pop as behind me in the small room the rustling sounds of other people—a doctor, my husband, my baby, and my mother—all uncomfortable and unsure what to say, could be heard as I lingered over the bottle studying my future, wondering what the spit would reveal, considering the technician in the lab who would process the spit full of my DNA much like a prophet reveals the future in tea leaves at the bottom of a cup, and the technician would relay the information to the computer before leaving for their lunch break, my future a simple task needing to be completed before another person’s future could be read, and this alone would tell me and my family members gathered in the small room making the small noises what the odds were of my death and what drastic measures might need to be taken to try to avoid it—answering the mystery of whether my ancestors gave me the genes that could cause various parts of my body to replicate and replicate and replicate until my death—maybe soon; maybe not, but now we wait for a lab test prophecy, everyone contemplating their own future.
JV Genova dabbles in photography and growing potatoes; she can be found on Twitter @jv_genova when she should be writing.
Photo by JV Genova.
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