as you are

forewarned they say you are
forearmed. I’d like
to remember
what a warning is. How it slips
through caution
into notice.
How it slips
through creation
as creation’s second condition. One
centimeter in a hundred days.
The health of the nail
is evident
in the moon-shaped
matrix of cells where some
have said a human’s
fate begins.
A nail moves out
from under its cuticle. I see
what is noticed
is only sometimes
what is known. Little moons,
lunulae, I try to remember
what the remotest
human was.