If the Heavens and the Earth were created in six days, human language came about 40 weeks later, when Eve watched the colostrum bubble emerge from her baby’s lips and saw that it was good. Exquisite emptiness encapsulated in a nutrient-rich spherical membrane, a miracle of separation. It burst with the babe’s first bilabial plosive.

‘Ba. Ba.’

‘Bubble,’ said Eve, in imperfect mimicry of her divine child. Fatty films of language formed round their souls like swaddling cloth.

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