“An infant doesn’t know where it ends and its mother begins. To the baby, the two are one — like the salt and the sea.”

A baby is born separate from her mother and the separation grows forever
to stay together means not to begin living
to begin living is a separation
when my daughter was born I separated
skin from skin, nerve from nerve
once we separated I was reassembled
reassembled while in another room nurses examined her
while she lay on her father’s chest in her introduction to human skin
my skin separated and sewn back together
I had to relearn how to feel
the journey didn’t begin when we were born
the journey is always beginning
eggs wait inside a still-forming body, a nesting of tiny potential
a universe in a warm sea
when my daughter was born she looked like my mother
my mother said she looked like her father, my grandfather
the family reunites in a baby’s face
and then she makes it her own