Our Secret (A Poem)

March 30th, 2023

It is in rest
That I feel it most.
What can I call the sensation?
An internal pulse. A churning. A surge.
A knock on the door of my rib cage.
I witness the rise and fall of my flesh
Stretched thin across my belly
And smile.
You’re awake.

Quick!
I place my husband’s hand upon the spot.
Nothing.
“Look,” I tell my mom.
Stillness.
Are you shy?
Or perhaps you want to keep our secret
Our secret.

Like an inside joke,
An imaginary friend,
Or a good deed seen by God alone;
We share this something—
This tender, vulnerable intimacy
That no one
But you and I know.
How could they?

As I drive alone in the car
You accompany me
To the ends of my solitude.
I’m sorry
For what I said aloud
Before I remembered
You are here.
You can hear me…
Do you like this song?
I pat back at you to the beat of the drum
And I know
You feel me.

You feel the heave of my chest
When I cry
Tears I hide from the world
But not from you.
You know I am not the perfect mother
I aspire to be.
You are inside me—
The real me,
The whole me,
Exposed to your absorbent mind.

But perhaps
That’s okay.
Perhaps that’s all you need me to be:
Yours,
As you are mine.
My body, your vessel;
My breath, your oxygen;
My food, your nourishment
And my heart,
Irrevocably captured
By your perfect, tiny fingertips
Until and even after
Birth do us part.