Your little hand clings on to my finger
Yearning for comfort
Your eyes open wide, your vision still blurry
Inarticulate but still so beautiful I look down at you suckling on your thumb with such keenness
Your thumb being the only meal you have ever known
I watch you breathe in these first few hours out of many
You are perfection and I am terrified
I’m terrified that I have already failed you
Failed to fix the world outside this crib before you step into the light to make sense of all those noises
Look into the crowds to give faces to those voices
I’m terrified that you are here too soon
Before I got the time to re-arrange the living room
Your uncle is in that living room
So is King from your brother’s soccer team
Oh wait the gardener cutting the grass in your bedroom
The friendly cleaner scrubbing the surfaces of your sheets
Your friend’s boyfriends and their friends too
Tell me how many people can fit in one room?
Can they not see that you are too small for them to consume?
I’m terrified that when the day comes I will fail to cover you
That you will be the short service while they wait in line to devour you
I know you will fight; Lord knows I’ll show you how
But I’m terrified that I won’t do it well enough
Look at you curled up in that onesie
Suckling on your thumb with such keenness
How could they not desire you even before your time has come?
It is their nature, medium rare, not done but almost there
Look at you, look oh look!
You are perfection and I am terrified.
Alpha Chizuzu (21st century) Malawi
Source: Makewana's Daughters
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