Cold toes, sound of crickets humming from the perimeter of woods around the house the plant on the table is wilting and there’s mess everywhere I can hear her soft snoring beneath me and her little body is steadily breathing her soft brown hair is spreading gradually she almost isn’t bald she almost looks like a little girl so pale her face like it’s made of wax which sounds like death they always say dead people look made of wax but she doesn’t look like that she looks pale and pink and asleep and perfect her features slightly exaggerated in sleep but carved out just right, poufy bow lips and the short tunnel from nose to upper lip I want to press my index finger lightly on the ridge of it the slight indent is just right for a finger and I don’t know whose nose she has but it’s what my dad calls “pert” and I think the nose really does make the face you can have a great face with lovely features but it’s all for nothing if you have a bad nose the nose really carries the weight of it all
and my god her nose is exactly the nose that could make any face truly beautiful really like a little sprite or sculpture in an exercise on beauty that’s the kind of nose she has and I like to boop it every so often as one does and one day she’ll see my finger approaching and she’ll feel that slight touch and laugh and maybe it’s just the little sound and the act of quickly going in for a touch and then popping away like a game that’s probably why it’s cute and why she’ll laugh and then I’ll blow some raspberries on her squishy white tummy that’s so smooth and I saw a picture online with a mom and her baby belly to belly and it said “this squishy belly made this squishy belly” and isn’t that sweet and true and it does make me not at all mind my now squishy stomach that has all these folds that it never used to have and I can’t sit forward or bend without three four lines of flowy skin bunching up it’s just so loose and it bothers me but not like I thought it would because I’m a mom I earned this and I look like this because of a lot of work I did I started a brand new life form in there and had to stretch and change
I used to be empty and then she was a chia seed and a papaya and a personal-size watermelon and then a fully formed little human who is all done and has all her parts and pieces and is absolutely perfect
she’s a little girl snoring on my chest and smacking her lips when she’s hungry and making this “eh eh” sound when she’s awake or starting to wake up and she’s signaling to us or whoever is listening that she’s there and awake and probably hungry and would like some attention please and then eventually she’ll start to cry and her bottom lip goes slanted and tears catch in her sparse brown eyelashes and her entire head goes sort of purpley-red and sometimes her scream is louder than you would think possible and it makes me afraid for when she’s a toddler and can really scream and get angry and will maybe scream at me on purpose and with hate or something like it and I will probably die inside a whole lot because how can I handle having her mad at me I would do almost anything to make her not mad at me but that’s bad parenting so I will have to be very careful and stay strong and let her yell at me if she has to and not apologize if I don’t need to but I’m very bad at that always and it’s not something I’m proud of and in fact I want her to grow up and know that I’m not the kind of person who apologizes because they want to keep other people happy or can’t handle confrontation or are afraid of someone being unhappy with them that’s not the right way to live and that’s not self-respect and I will try very hard to change if I can so she sees me stand up for myself and sees that she should do that too and can learn that she doesn’t ever need to apologize unless she’s actually done something wrong
that’s what I want to teach her among one hundred other things that I might need to learn first right now but there’s still time because she can only say “ga” and can’t even laugh yet and the days are going to sloosh so quickly and they already are but if I pay enough attention to what I’m doing and what she’s doing maybe I can make it all count and do a few things right and that’s what matters but also she is going to be stronger and smarter and braver and better and totally different from me in a lot of ways I bet and that’s the best thing and no matter what I do or what her dad does she’s her own special entirely new person and will make her own life what it is.