The World Was Lighter Than Eight Pounds

In that beeping, whirring factory, they set the weight of the world on my chest. The world was lighter than eight pounds. She was sighing in dreaming. The room, now shaking with exhaustion, was still anchored to the quaking earth by a solid reality, an air-solid reality, a new breath adding carbon dioxide to where stores of waiting life had just been. Perfection has been manifested here, the pain edged off by seventy five years of promise in my hands. Her big grey-blue eyes show me where to look. Her hand fits around my finger, points it toward the concrete above us. I know I must have never really loved before now, bleeding from our family ties, grateful even still that I was ripped open, open by a ray of sunshine that struggled to get out. The sky needed more sunshine more than it just needed more me.