Gertrude of Helfta
on Maternal-Fetal 
Microchimerism

Gertrude saw quite clearly how it was: 
There were sisters, yes, who had known the same 
womb, but it didn’t end there. Somehow cells 
were circulating: those sisters also 
shared some whit of their mother and perhaps 
an older sibling—sister or brother— 
deep in their livers, kidneys, hearts, and bones, 
the microchimeristic presence of 
these distant others enlarging every 
hour’s choir. And far away, in some 
cold castle, the sisters sat at table 
in other bodies, imperceptible 
emissaries from Helfta cloistered in 
their mother’s blood, a brother’s marrow. 
What would be so marvelous in this truth 
yet to be discovered? It tells no more 
than what we all live daily: sweet honey 
overflows the cells that form the comb. 
Every body’s integral to Body.