First Breath

That morning I prayed to flickering exit signs, to the hum of fluorescent lights, to anything that would listen in that sterile room. Then— your cry pierced the air like dawn cracking open the night, sudden and necessary, and I knew every prayer I'd ever whispered had been practice for this one moment. Your fist, smaller than my thumb, gripped my finger with the fierce certainty of someone who had spent nine months building themselves from my blood and breath, arriving here where the metal bedrails catch the light and air burns sharp with antiseptic. We named you Arian, but you had already made my hands shake— not from fear, but from holding something that could change the axis of every morning to come. Love is not gentle at all, but sharp as the edge of a blade, cutting through everything I once thought mattered. The room fell quiet. Nurses moved like whispers around our circle of three. My thumb traced the curve of your ear— so small I was afraid to touch it, but to not touch felt like turning away from light. You are here. Later, when they ask what it was like, I will tell them about the way you yawned— once— your bottom lip trembling like a leaf before rain, as if you had just finished the hardest work of your life, and decided this strange, bright world was worth the trouble of breathing.