Becoming

We “held you sweetly right in the center of our hearts”

comforting, patting, nursing, feeding, doing

Until you ran off “into the open and expansive spaces of the world”

while we remember those days as if they were just yesterday.

Now we pace through empty, quiet hallways,

Sometimes filling the silence with the silliness we created for you

but we’ve found is now a part of us.

We busy our hands—picking up relics from the morning play, before the school bell rings,

noticing how their number gets smaller as you get bigger,

—Or folding clothes that just keep on growing.

And sometimes

We “stare at the wall”

Counting the minutes until we are reunited with the other parts of our hearts.

At the same time you are discovering who you are in this world…

So are we, again.