Existential Crisis in a Genetics Lecture

Nothings makes one wonder

Like the study of being

More existential

Than the science of living

I found out today

That every person,

Every human who has

Loved, lost, and grieved

Only differs from another

By 0.4%

Every person who has cried in their car at a stoplight,

traffic whizzing across the crosswalk unforgivingly as their world crumbles

Every mother staring at a sink of dishes and dirty water

telling herself that she never regretted marrying him

The church would never approve of a divorce anyway

Every teenager who has laid on top of their Jurassic Park comforter,

staring up at their popcorn ceiling,

thinking that surely no one has ever felt exactly as they do

Every uniquely drawn breath

Every bat of an eyelash

Every finger dragged along skin

Every memory lived

Everything about us so entirely alien from one another

Can be condensed to 0.4%

There are Just a few million base pairs between you and I

A nucleotide chain spanning the gap

That is only a fraction of a percentage

And yet that number,

So staggeringly small,

Is simultaneously immense

Spanning the gap of what makes us human

Perhaps we aren't so different after all

Every memory lived

Every uniquely drawn breath

Every bat of an eyelash

Every finger dragged along skin

Brooke Freeman is a student who has unrealistic dreams of being a famous authoress who writes mystery novels and poetry. However, until then, she bides her time by writing in any and every Clarksville coffee shop as well as earning her degree in biological science with a minor in creative writing.