wildscape. literary journal

The Day Before Your First Birthday
by D.C. Dubs

Hundreds, thousands of times, I have set you down to sleep in the same way. Alone, on your back, and safe in your crib. You did not turtle in the corner the way you usually did, face mushed down in the mattress. Instead, you clambered to your feet and cried. A sharp cry. Not from a dirty diaper, not from a hungry belly. I touched your forehead. No fever. You reached for me, cried again. 

A scared cry. 

So I scooped you, my tomorrow toddler, up. I rocked you in your dark little nursery, the mechanical sound of ocean waves washing the walls. I sang the magic song, “Wheels on the Bus,” and you settled, slowly, my shoulder wet with your snot and salty tears, one arm hooked around my neck. Humming, I nestled into you, your head tucked into the crook between my clavicle and shoulder. 

Your knees bend like a frog, one on either side of my thigh. I have never been so grateful for the soft padding of my postpartum body, pillowing the tide of your belly, the tiny little crests of your muscles and curves. You are too tall to fit inside my torso the way you once did, but you’ll never be too tall to not be mine. 

A year ago, you were here, pressing against me, tucked in the dark cave of my body. Tomorrow, it will be a year since we split into two. For so long we used to dream like this, two halves of a whole. Until you didn’t need to anymore. Tomorrow marks a year’s worth of gifts: my love and my sleep and my body and my time and my job and tomorrow I will give you a green stuffed dragon, wrapped in shiny paper, strawberry shortcake with a yellow candle on top. 

But here, now, sleeping with your heart against mine, it was you who gave me this birthday gift.  

about the author // D.C. Dubs