born

Wind wafts through the window and onto my son's bare skin. He has kicked the covers off, and I breathe in his sillhouette in the light from the streetlight on the other side of the wall. His chest rises and falls steadily for awhile and then catches and I see that he is crying.

I have been singing him a song. "This is the first song that I ever sang to you," I whisper, and he nods.

And then, "When you were born, you were tiny and perfect," I start, and tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and onto the pillow that we are sharing. "You were clean and bright. You looked at me right away."

I know in this moment that he remembers, even if he doesn't know it yet. He was there, present like we all were the moment that we saw light, all on our own individual days. Some of us were born under moonlight, some in the sunshine or in almost complete darkness. Some of us were born under fleurescent lights.

But we were all born. And all of us carry those memories, and maybe if our own mammas were in bed telling us the stories of our own perfect fingers and toes we would weep as well. Knowing that we are never loved more than we were at that moment.

The moment before we were afraid to be loved.

There is so much love, here in this place.