TWI Poem: Mother to Son

I was reborn with your birth, morning-cusp-baby, 36-hour labor

You made sure I was really ready for you

We fused, blood to bone, heart to soul, your tiny palm curled around my finger

I am not sure what your eyes saw, in what color, where you looked past my face

Was it to a life lived before – together, apart? In what role, incarnation, connection?

Or was it to what was coming ahead, my new partner-in-crime, our easy camaraderie

Two goofballs on the same page of the script, an instant handle on each other’s pulse

Suddenly no pain, no epidural mattered – only a future envisioned, a new covalent bond

You’re slipping fast from my hand – sand from a sieve, I remind myself from time to time

We cohabit only for less than two decades, and then just like floating logs in a river,

the lumberjack decides to separate our paths, our destinies fork into two

Was I ever a bottleneck I wonder – I open the cork, you gush forth into the ocean,

forging your own metal, brandishing your own scimitar, brave fearless warrior

I hesitate to call you mine – we are not meant to own each other, we simply share

our existences, we trade the intangible love in our hearts, firmly install it there

But for now, I am allowed to remember the day you emerged, comet from stardust,

before they cut the cord, you opened your eyes, processed the universe as if to say

“hello world”