BABY, LEAVING

In my beginning, bewildered, I knew only softness and pain. My body lay still on a cushiony surface, surrounded by walls that had built me a fence. I was more than protected; I was trapped, and enjoyed my small prison, that tiny plush world. A bright rounded light shone straight down from a spot far above. Soothing and constant. Odd sounds on all sides intrigued and bewildered -- laughter and moans, small murmurs and sighs. Meanings beyond me. Clear comfort I had for most of time's tick, but distractions soon entered this closed sacred place. Shrieks -- my own, but containing within a force all too foreign. My throat shouted them out, yet their escape was short lived, for soon they returned, and I would wail once again. Despite this discomfort, a strange sort of ease often descended and rested, lingered and stayed. Were it not for a fierce, ragged flame that slowly ignited my insides with an uncommon fire, singeing my essence, I could have remained, over time, calm and content in that rectangular bubble.

For life was so novel! No language to curse out my confusion, or give praise to its virtues. Sensation itself -- all that I had to express simple needs. Tears, tangible: filling up all my vision, dribbling down my small cheeks, a regular spring, reliable. The roars from my mouth, the leaks out of my eyes, even the steady stream of hot shit exiting out of my anus, rancid but mine, were all solid proof I contained my own magic. I was nothing but tactile emissions; everything else, shades of shadows. A mystery with myself at its centre, the question mark's small, round dot.

When, inevitably, the light went away, the dark came back full. In that black for so long, I almost forgot light's true worth, its warmth and transparency, its unselfish bright wrap. Then it returned, garish but welcome. In each new burst of pure yellow -- grand faces that trembled. Soon, I supposed: someone other than me. Touching my skin and my hair. Stroking, but cautious. I felt their great fear, almost physically transferred. I was somehow limited. Separate. I began to sense that my own world must somehow soon grow to include those large forms looming so high and up there. Me. Them. Together. Life? If this was its truth, why this great hurt far inside, was it all just for me?

Next, often, pain. Quick and steady, slicing through insides. Agony intense, my cries gaining speed, gathering, soaring, achieving a strange manic pitch whose great height cancelled sound. These noises all merged with that round bulb in the sky that hung down from high up. After: nothing but silence. As sweet and as dense as the darkness it brought, this sound all but swallowed, the light sucked away, a full black embrace, lasting and firm.