hands now

Now my hands have found a small back to land on

and one of them is always working hard on air bubbles, like morse code; tap-tap-tap, I tell that air up and out, you don’t belong.

Now my hands are gently rubbing up and down a tiny spine,

wondering how the terrain can be so small for now.

I smell her head (of course) and I reach to move my hair in case it might be in her eyes or nose or mouth. She is up on my shoulder and moving my hair reminds me that I haven’t lately or slowly moved my hand around her small head, brushing soft little wisps of her hair into lines. So I do. I move my hand around and around this soft and tiny noggin and I breathe her in.

I want to write pure and profound words about her existence and I want everyone in the world to read them, to know her. I want to take a million pictures and share at least half of them with all those same people. But then, the words flow through me and land somewhere else in the absence of time and it’s rare that I find my way around the house to where the camera has been most recently misplaced.

So now I am simply here, sharing less than my heart has to offer but enough.

Now my baby is crying a lot and I wish I could help. I want magic hands. I know this all will pass so fast, too fast, and I know that sometimes I just can’t fix it. Only time fixes so many things.

I struggle for acceptance because I want the crying to stop trying to steal these days from us. They are already too few.

So when she sleeps I watch her breathe. I watch her eyelashes grow because I’m pretty sure they grow just that fast. I rest my hand on her tiny foot and I wonder at her and I call her The Bumper Grumper or Bop.

My hands are his and his and his and hers. They are worn from years of tapping out a morse code or making or washing. From all the doing. They have created and they create. They write to tell and they give.

These hands are mine.