And so as he came into the world eleven weeks too soon, too grey, too small, too still, I cursed myself for not being able to keep him in the safety inside. The one crucial task for me to perform, and I had failed. Like a fruit’s husk, my body deflated with his absence, stretched-out flesh and aching joints the signature of where he once was. Machines now flashed and buzzed and beeped around him, keeping him warm, safe, fed, giving him what I could not. I lay by his side, staring at his miniscule hands and sapling limbs through plexiglass, like he was an attraction and I was a tourist. Often I would reach out and touch the warm plastic, imagining him back under my skin, wriggling and growing.
Even now, though he is pink and loud and vibrant, and moves in a blur on bikes, in trees and with friends, I sometimes see flashes of his tiny frame, seemingly abandoned, expelled from his first home before he could even open his eyes to see his new one. So, gently, I stop him and enfold him in my arms, willing my body to give him just a little bit more of what he missed.
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'Incomplete' was first published in Re-Side in February 2020.
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