She looks so happy with her new baby, all coo
and smile and jiggle and swing.
I smile at her, and think of everything
I do not tell her. How the child will grow up
to break her heart over and over. How
she will give him more love
than she knew she had, and it will not
be enough. How he will hate her
for holding a line. How she must hold it,
still. How she will come to doubt herself.
How all of us are broken, no
matter how hard we’ve worked to be
whole, and how none of us can
carry the other, no matter how
much we long to. How she will
beg her own heart, Stay open,
stay open. And how some wise friend
may someday say to her,
Shut down your big heart
at many a time. It needs to rest
while you are awake.
And she will know perhaps by then
the truth of love, how it is never
what we imagined. How
big a risk it is to love. How
everything depends on this. And how
she will weep, someday, watching
another young mother in the park,
cooing at her baby, remembering
how simple it seemed, and how
perhaps it is still that simple,
a mother, a child, a big world to explore.