Nights I lie awake, patient, loving,
your kicks a need in you
for movement, separateness;
in me, a knocking, a sign of your living.
One day I will open, door after door,
pushing you out into my larger world.
Tonight I place my hand on my belly:
when you kick beneath my palm
I can almost touch you,
child that I carry but cannot hold.
When the midwife clamps the flaccid cord,
what pulsates between us will become invisible.
Still bloody, you will root for my nipple,
pull it deep into your eager mouth.
The drops of colostrum will be rich and sweet
like the streams of milk about to bind us.
You will gaze upward with dark baby eyes,
searching my face for your name, your future.
My own gaze will tell you: Beloved, Life.
It will not reveal the truth of sunderance.
Yet the day will come when you drink from a cup,
smiling and dribbling while my breasts throb.
The day will come when you cross a room,
toddling joyously away from my lap.
The day will come when you speak a sentence,
dazzled by attention from strangers on a train.
That day, too, will arrive when you slam a door,
in a screaming imitation of my own temper.
But across the distance between my arms
and the frightening, beckoning preschool table
will lie an unseen umbilical cord.
As you choose a chair and reach for markers,
as you draw a circle and call it “Mama,”
the cord will stretch, as my belly once did,
allowing me to close the classroom door,
embracing your side of it as well as mine.