Rub my head, my son says. Rub it again. Rub more.
I cradle the round perfection of a head that never had
to push up against vaginal walls, a head that never had
to burst through a door too small to get to this world,
that had instead another door calmly, graciously opened for it,
the light pouring in all at once upon his already open eyes
as if he had only to knock and we would answer. I pause,
thinking of the chick that can’t peck its way out of the shell
that enfolds it, how it will die as surely as the chick whose shell
is broken for it. Rub my head, he commands again.
See, he wants that pressure against the strong bones of his skull,
he wants the undulating pulse of my fingers pressing down,
circling, tunnelling him through the adolescent years to come,
my palms flat and open, hot with rubbing. Sighing with pleasure
he doesn’t want me to stop, not before he is born into the dark
folds of night and fights his way along the corridors of dreams
when others would sleep—a mighty presence heaving his body
up and down mountainsides, thrashing his cocoon of blankets off
until he straddles his heaven, his earth and wakes, having
earned the day.
