18 1/2

The baby can now see. The book says the baby's eyes are so sensitive that if I shine a flashlight at my belly, the baby will flinch and try to hide. I imagine flashing a sort of Morse code in: an I need you to be good, an I promise I'll try, an I'm sorry I'm so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open, a hush baby, an I love you, sweet one. When we went in for the ultrasound at thirteen weeks, the baby sucked on its pinky. So strange to have a child growing in me, sucking its pinky, ducking from light. I feel fat and happy and wish I only felt happy and even for that I'm sorry: I don't want to be so selfish now. Driving these Oklahoma roads, the wind rushes in, and the baby moves. The moving feels like someone running their finger along a freshly healed cut; I shudder then long for it to happen again. Now, I'll take us to bed where it's dark and cool--my mother's bed in my mother's house though she's left for the night to drive to work at a faraway hospital--, and there, on the pillows that smell the way my mother smells, we'll sleep--my baby and me--where the only sound is the clicking of the fan and the only light is the one that will come in the morning.