Bedtime story

Once upon a time your hair was dark as mine.

Your hands were always in fists,

mine always reaching.

When you slept, you slept in a basket beside the bed.

When I slept, I dreamt you were drowning

in bedsheets. Mostly, we stayed up

all night, crying.

It wasn’t love at first sight, despite the promises

of what-to-expect literature.

Your heart rate had fallen

to non-reassuring; you were danger

wrenched out of me.

I was broken, not elated.

Your first day on earth your scalp was loose

as a shar-pei’s— boggy the nurse called it—

because you’d been sucked

into the world.

Too tender to clean, your soft spot stayed crusted

with the muck of motherhood.

When I tried to describe your hair

to my mother over the phone, I called it grey.

We weren’t allowed visitors; we refused

the hospital photographer.

I propped you on starchy pillows, too afraid

to touch you. I buzzed for help when you hiccupped.

The night nurse mashed your face into my breast

and you gnawed absently, but didn’t swallow.

You slept against fluorescent glare and burned

through your cache of fat. You didn’t want to need me.

The next day, in the hospital lobby, I waited

with you, a pink frog strapped into a car seat.

Gushing the blood that had sustained you, I imagined

your father paying the parking fee and driving away

as fast and far as he could.