I don’t wake up anymore. I am woken up. I am pulled unwillingly from the amber by howls of hunger. He doesn’t cry, he screams in anger. Feed me now!

This one is definitely my son.

He is all rooting and grasping. Clenching and unclenching fists. Jerky limbs and puckered face. He is warmth and breath of milk. He is my whole heart made foreign, and I love him in a way that is both soothing and painful to me. To love him is to lose him. The then and the now and the will be is all hopelessly bound and inseparable.

He makes me laugh, my little noodle. He pulls off the breast and scrunches up his face. With intense concentration, he puffs up his cheeks and purses his lips and makes a “puh” sound. Then he grins at me, all pride and satisfaction. I laugh and well up and stifle the urge to press him against me and cover him with kisses. Content with his approval, he returns to more pressing matters - food!

He is his own person. But he is also mine. He is of me and from me. The love I feel for him is innate and complete. He’ll never quite know or understand just how perfect he is. How breathlessly I love him. He’ll have a life of his own that will be his center and I will fall to periphery and shadow. But for now I whisper and hum and lullaby. Nestled in our little couch. Happy in my orbit.