They lay her against your chest in the delivery room; she’s the weight of a small cat, her cheek to your heart, searing. You are the only light in her eyes; she is your mirror. Exhausted, you hand her to your mother who presses a kiss against her down for a long moment, and then gives her back to the nurse.
You wake, later, in a hospital bed, in a body newly hollow, your heart sewn up with broken needles and old thread. You close your eyes against the growing of the light and she is there, leaning out from the shadows.
She is one; she toddles for the sliding doors as you get home from work, her mop of honey brown bouncing, a sticky hand against the glass. You drop your purse, your keys, the groceries, the world; she is in your arms, your little altar.
She is five; eyes wide, hungry for everything and velvet brown, like yours, like your father’s. She’s the star of kindergarten, already reading, the teacher’s pet, like you. You discourage this favoritism, even as your heart wills your little Aries to take everything she can get.
She is twelve; she climbs into bed with you in the middle of the night to tell you she is dying; you take her to the bathroom in the dark, fumble under the sink for the Kotex, sit on the edge of the tub in the moonlight coming in from the patio; her shadow presses the thick mattress of cotton against her underwear and you’re not sure but you think she says I’m so glad you’re here. She sits down beside you, her head knocking against your shoulder.
She is eighteen, graduation gown flapping in the wind, fingers visored against the stadium lights until she spots you; she pulls the cap from her long, dark hair and tosses it into the air, her hands so like your mother’s. Her smile rivals all the stars in the night sky. Short, like her father, who you barely remember, she slips arms around your waist, her cheek hot against your chest and you are eighteen; still blue about the boy who popped your cherry the last week of high school; it’s the Fourth of July, and your friends say come to the beach, he’s not worth it and fuck him anyway, everything melts under the sun. There’s beer, there’s a blonde boy, a friend of a friend with beckoning eyes. The morning comes with gray skies; you feel different on the ride home. You feel different the whole first semester of college. It’s March, when she is born.
The door cracks open. It’s not your mother; it’s the nurse who’d asked you earlier what you were going to name your baby, even though they put you on a different ward, not maternity, to avoid questions like this. There’s a man in a suit, speaking words you can’t hear; he slides papers across the overbed table; the pen stutters on the blurry line next to Natural Father—you scratch NONE. Next to Adoptive Parent is a name you aren’t supposed to see. The man is talking to the nurse about the Astros game. You lean in, cover the paper with a forearm, hand bent like you’re stopping the kid next to you from cheating, that name on repeat, in your blood, in your bones, a mantra for someday, as you sign your own.

Mollie McLean is currently writing flash in what used to be Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, two of Pamela Des Barres’ books on writing memoir, and she is rumored to have kissed Alex Chilton in a Greensboro sports bar in a previous life. She is occasionally on Twitter as @pennypriddy and if you know where she found this handle she will buy you a coke.
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