Before I was pregnant, I thought carrying a baby meant knowing a baby. That’s not true. I don’t know anything about this child. Pregnancy is a locked door in my stomach, all the weight of life and death and still no way to know it. The baby gives me a small kick, taking what’s delicate—lung tissue, tiny see-through fingers, hair fine enough to spin webs—and hardens it into a tough thing, a thing that likes it rough. It’ll grow and I will be the only one who remembers when it was unmarked and delicate as a moth.
