You held it the way you would hold water in a basket, elbows locked, breath rationed, terrified of the exact thing you most wanted to do, which was relax. I was watching from the corner where the afternoon light forgot to leave. I collect that particular stiffness in the shoulders; it is my favorite raw material.
So here is what I will do with the small heavy weight of it, around two in the morning, when your guard is down.
The blanket will become the ocean, warm and shallow, and the baby will be sleeping on your chest as it did today, except the chest will be a boat, and the boat will need no rowing. The number on the hospital band, the one you kept checking like it might change, will float off and become a bird and you will not read it again.
Your own mother will be there, younger than you have ever seen her, and she will hold out her arms, and you will hand the baby over and then, impossibly, you will also be the baby. Both at once. In sleep this is allowed.
The fear you carried all day, that you would drop it, that you did not know how, that no one had checked you were qualified, I will keep, but I will make it very small. Sock-sized. You will find it in a coat pocket and laugh.
You will wake before you understand any of this. The light will come in flat and ordinary and you will remember only that something was soft. That is fine. I was never meant to last.
But your arms will remember.
Try, tomorrow, holding it looser.