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You wake with a start and a cry. Nuzzled under my arm, with your face burrowing into my blouse at the spot where you nursed to sleep. You wake, despairing at your empty mouth that was full of warm drops when you drifted to sleep.
I flip you over to the other side of me, and your hand grasps my blouse while your lips root for my skin. And with an intake of air, I see it. I see you like the moment I first held you in my arms. Something about how you look right now looks exactly like you did then. Flashing before my eyes, your cone-shaped head and your slippery skin streaked with vernix. Your warmth arriving joyfully from inside my body into my arms.
Perhaps it is your hair, sweaty and matted from laying cuddled against me. Plastered to your scalp in every which direction, matted with our sweat like it was matted with our waters.
Perhaps it is your face, flushed pink and covered with pressed-in sleep lines from the wrinkled covers of the bed. Skin temporarily crushed into designs, like the wrinkles on your forehead when you squinted at the light for the first time.
Perhaps it is your eyes, bleary from sleep like they were bleary from a world of dim and dark. Blinking in the suddenness of waking up. Blinking to a world sensed but never seen.
Something about holding you today, tucked against my body that feels like the very first time.
