F ck, I’m almost livid at myself for being this silly heap of a mess. . I am staring at our doorway, cracked open & showing a sliver of dim hallway, and i wait for my baby to need me. The sentinel - a monitor which very tenuously links the two of us by no sense other than sound - silently betrays the fact that, right now, he does not. . Need me.
I am waiting, still. For a cackle of static to erupt suddenly from the tiny retro-looking device and carry his little voice to me , his mama. Instead it is my ears alone that are filled with a needlessly terrified buzz, and oh the base of my stomach swells and heaves with that same noise now and oh oh i just want my baby back in the crib beside me here. Not forever, just for now. Where I can see him. Where I can hear him breathe and move and where I can reach him within one stretch, should the long long night prove too much for one so small to bear alone.
He’s just a baby, yeah. My baby he is. But he knows what ‘alone’ is already. (Did you know how soon they learnt it?) And though i try to act so strong and one so cheery like we don’t both know the word, for us, means ‘away from one another’, it shatters my uneven heart to be away from him and yet still know that he really is just fine
without me always near .
I miss my baby who is in the other room for the first time, even though it feels as if I am the one who has been unexpectedly exiled from my own warmth . . .
Oh,
i hear
my baby boy I’m here,
my baby boy.
I’m here,
right here.
Always here
