Four billion years for this. The lungfish gulped raw air with organs that were not lungs yet. The shrew held its breath in a burrow while the ground shook overhead. The woman kept the coals alive through a winter that took three of her children, cupping the ember against her own ribs.
The man looked at the seed corn when his belly was screaming and buried it anyway. And here sits our heir, warm, fed, spine at ease, doing absolutely nothing on a plank of wood in the sun.
We do not understand it. There is no threat in the treeline. No one is hungry. The eyes we sharpened over ten thousand generations to catch the leopard's shift in the grass are instead half-closed, aimed at a bird stealing crumbs, and we feel our whole body relax and we do not trust it. Where is the winter. Where is the thing that is coming.
Nothing is coming. That is the part we keep reaching for and missing. The bench is bolted down so it will always be here. There is a little brass plate on it with a name, someone else's line, remembered on purpose, for no reason but love. Our runner reads it and does not have to move.
We built these hands to tend fire, to strip bark, to drag the kill home before dark. They are folded now in a lap. Empty. Safe. We wanted, every one of us, down the whole trembling length of the line, exactly one thing: for the one at the end to get to sit down.
Look. The bird came closer. Our heir went still so as not to scare it.
Nobody breathe.
Let them have this.