On Heartbeats

I sit at the kitchen table, staring. The sunlight pours in the window beside me but does so gently, filtered through clouds and branches, and the Christmas cards propped up on the sill. I don’t see the sunlight or the cards; I don’t feel any of it. Because I’m back in the hospital, holding my baby girl, watching her heart beat.

I can see her heart beating, but she doesn’t breathe, never did. She's already been declared dead, and sometimes I think I have too.

Another small hand reaches up, back in the kitchen, closing around my ring finger and pulling. I move too slowly, so the child complains and pulls more insistently into the next room where a ball pit has been set up. Most of the balls are no longer in the pit, but that makes it easier for me as the child pushes me in.

And smiles.

His heart is beating, but I can't see it. He is breathing too, but I can't hear the breath- only the laughter it enables when my eyes meet his.

The child throws the balls around and stops, looking back at me, making sure I'm watching. When his eyes catch mine, he laughs again. I have said nothing, done nothing; my body is too slowly emerging from the memory of his sister.

But I don't have to do anything. He just wants me to see him, to watch him

as his heart beats

and so does mine.