I am holding forty-one people in this decorated room, and I am holding the balloons too, though the balloons keep testing me, straining upward on their ribbons as if they have somewhere better to be. I do not let them. I let nothing go.
I am holding the gifts, stacked and wrapped, and the folding chairs, and the punch in its glass bowl, and the cake with its small sugar shoes that no one will eat first because they are too pretty. I am holding the coffee in every cup at the exact tilt each hand chooses. I am good at cups. No one thanks me for the cups.
Chiefly I am holding one woman near the center, and she is heavier than she was, and I have adjusted for this every day without being asked. She leans back into the chair and I take the extra. She rests both hands on the round of herself and I take that too. There is a second small weight inside her now, and I have already begun to hold it. It does not know me yet. It will.
The room keeps saying she is carrying so much. They say she has a lot on her plate, that this is a big weight off her shoulders, that her heart is full and full and full. I checked. Her plate has cake on it, four ounces. Her heart weighs what it always weighed.
And yet I watched her eyes go wet and her whole body bend toward these weightless things as if they were the only things in the room with mass.
I do not understand what they are lifting. I understand only my part. When the small one finally falls, and it will fall, out and down and into waiting hands, I will be under it. I am always under it.
I do not let go.