before, after

Morrison just showed me this picture he took of the moment I got to meet Joe. It was really only ten hours or so from when they ceremoniously yanked him out of me to when I got to meet him for the first time, but it felt like about 900 years, each second a tiny life of missing someone I’d never met. I don’t remember exactly what I was feeling when I looked at him, but I think it was something like ‘literally everything,’ like I felt myself being born? and was also hungry and lonely and full of love and mourning the death of every person who has ever, ever died, aching for each of their mothers. Also I probably had to pee, or cough. It feels like a weird picture to frame, or even put in a baby book? And so I leave it here, so I can always return to it. It’s a picture of two new lives: there’s Joe’s, and then there is mine. There is my life before this moment, turning to mist in the hallway I was pushed up towards him, and then there is everything After.

Leave a Reply