I lifted the little blanket at the corner while they weren't looking, just to smell it, and it smelled of milk and iodine and something raw and new that I have never carried before and already lost, because that is the only thing I do. They will not let this one go.
Have you seen it? The whole room bends inward, four grown things folded around a fifth that weighs nothing, all of them curled so their bodies make a wall, a warm bowl of arms, and inside the bowl the smallest one opens and closes its fists on nothing at all, grabbing, grabbing, the way I grab at every open window and hold none of it.
I slipped in under the door when someone came, and I moved across its scalp, that soft down thinner than dandelion seed, and it startled, this tiny thing, at me, at the plain fact of moving air, and made a sound. They rushed. They tucked the blanket tighter. They closed the gap I came through.
That is the thing about them, the holders. They spend the whole first day learning to close around what they cannot lose, when I have spent forever learning the opposite, learning to arrive and touch a cheek and be gone before the cheek knows it was touched.
I lifted one strand of the mother's hair off her wet neck. She didn't feel it. Good. And I took the milk-smell and the iodine and that raw new note with me under the door, down the corridor, out past the parking lot lights, and I am already three streets away and cannot for my life tell you the color of its eyes.