I am holding your entire body in my arms.
You are wrapped in the blanked grandma knit for you; your fingers poke through the stitches. Our chests, pressed together, expand and fall at different rhythms.
I can feel your heartbeat.
A pink cheek is illuminated by the dim light, inviting me to kiss its smooth surface. I do. Your ear touches a tiny shoulder, a shoulder that suggests that someday it will belong to a man, strong and angular. But not tonight. Tonight it is soft and round, like a caterpillar or half baked bread.
Music from a toy given to you at Christmastime lulls you to sleep, but it is your breathing that soothes me. Shallow, rattled breaths escape from your mouth, passing by rose petal lips that beg me to meet them with my own. Paper eyelids cover dreaming eyes, and I long to kiss these, too.
Every part of you draws me close; I could stay in this embrace forever.
5 comments:
Amber, it's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Some of my most precious memories of my children as babies occured in the wee hours of night.
damn it...you just made me cry. I miss my own kids because of this crazy week of work and I am really missing my nephew (err...and my sister).
I love this poem, if you can call it a poem. I was never good at the rhyming stuff. It captures a real moment in time, better than a photo, and it reminds me why writing is so valuable.
don't worry, Nate, I'll come and see you soon. And I'll bring your nephew, too.
(smile)
This is lovely.
Is it weird that it makes me want a baby of my own to kiss?
Beautiful, Amber. Captures the essence of why life is meaningful.
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