Early mornings, steel blue light
through my bedroom blinds,
you’ll let me cradle you still,
receptive, unasking like when
you were a baby. Your hair
is soft but growing coarser,
thickening, taking on the smells
of the dirt and leaves you play in.
It is no longer infant sweet.
Your body is becoming
long and lank, unwieldy
in my arms, approaching
irretrievably your full size,
a future when, even sleep-dusted,
you’ll not seek my embrace.
All this before I wake my phone,
dumb and blinding, telling me
the latest toll in Gaza. Children
and parents tangled together, holding
tight as they pray for intercession.
Mom asks you if you’ll always
be her baby. Well-trained,
you still sometimes say yes.
You’ve never asked what lies
between here and always.
The scarlet thread of your life
which I cling to like sacrament
traces so easily to the start.
You are my sign that every man
and woman was once a child
and every child once an infant—
void of schemes, borderless,
ignorant of the scar they’d bear,
the same mark of soft flesh
on their bellies, a reminder
of how they entered a world
where they may
or may not
grow up.