I leave the sun and I am the window over the small crib, all at once, no distance in me, only arrival. They say I crossed the dark for eight minutes. I was not there for it. I am only ever here: this pane of glass, this warm room, this soft new head.
The big one holds the little one, and the big one is not moving. This I cannot understand. It sways a fraction. It stares down at the small face and does something with its own face, water rising in its eyes, which is good, I love water, I love the way I split apart inside a tear and hand back a rainbow nobody asked for.
But it will not put the small one down. It has been holding, they tell me, for an hour. An hour. I have heard of the hour. I cannot picture its inside.
I land on the newborn's eyelid, thin as a petal, pink where I pass through it. The eye beneath is learning me. First light, they call it, though every light is first, there is no other kind, I am always the first thing and the last thing and they are the same thing.
The big one whispers something and does not check the glowing clock by the crib, the only human I have ever seen forget to. It just holds. It would hold forever, whatever forever is, some long dim room I keep hearing about and will never enter.
I strike the wet of the small new eye and I am seen and I am spent, in the same instant, gladly. Welcome. I am leaving.
I have only just come.