Last Time

I kiss your nose, your forehead, your cheek, your chin.

I squeeze you tightly to me and feel your soft squishiness give.

I look in your eyes and you look back at me and in my heart I feel a tugging ache I cannot fully define.

I ache because you are my baby, mine to squeeze and squish.

I ache because in this predawn darkness under the blankets we form a cocoon and every day you are closer to emerging out of it into the world.

I ache because every morning you wake up you are my baby, but every morning you are a little less my baby and a little more your own self.

I ache and I ache and I laugh at the joy it makes me feel to hurt this way.

You look at me laughing and it makes you laugh too.

It seems that this might have been your last time nursing.  It felt that way, how you kept your body unusually still as if you, too, were savoring the moment.  Your legs were carefully curled up, tucked tightly next to mine, your little hand free and tapping gently on my chest, just above my heart.

No one told me that hurting like this could feel so good.

I wonder if I would have believed them.

I'm a believer now.