What are we?
We are so many things. We're the the whole universe, bottled up right here into a lifetime. We're imperfect and warm and soft like dirt. We're shimmering and bright and eternal like the moon.
What are we? What are we?
Humans.
Messy...
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• five years later
His hair is soft beneath my chin, his head fitted back into the slope of my neck. He clings to my chest, laughing at the thumping rhythm inside. I hold him against me, his miniature carbon-copy of Peter's nose pressing into my cheek.
"Mama, please bring me to the tree," he whispers, voice delicate and sweet.
"Okay. To the tree we go," I answer, scooping him up from the picnic blanket and rising to my feet. I move across the manicured lawns of the mansion, peeking in at the students mindlessly slumping in their desks through the windows. The sun warms my face until we find refuge in the shade of the tree, the big sycamore just behind the pond where my stomach first glowed. Light escaping through the leaves finds the bark Peter carved all those years ago.
Firefly + Quicksilver
"Are you ready, Floyd?," I ask him. He pulls his head back, eyes glowing back at mine. Light meeting light in yellow everglow.
"Yes," he answers.
I gingerly lift him up toward the tree, high enough where his hand can sweep along the peeling bark, can caress the leaves all bright green and happy and his arrival. The entire tree creaks and leans in his direction, greeting him. I gawk as the tips of his microscopic fingers glow like our eyes, fading all sorts of prismatic colors as he giggles into the air. I laugh with him.
"What is it saying?" I inquire.
He closes his eye to listen to the tree, "She likes the sun."
I close my eyes too and I hum, feeling the warmth of summer with a blissful sigh. "Me too." I peer back up at Floyd. "Will you help her grow a little?"
He nods, brushing his hand against the end of a branch. The grain of the bark fills with light and stretches, sprouting out three new little buds.
I snuggle into the side of his face, pride overwhelming my chest, "Awesome job, Leafbug. You're getting really good at that."
He smiles at me and then feels my hair between the pads of his fingers, "Thank you, Mama." We stare at each other in the quiet, taking in every detail of each other's face.
The quiet breaks with a violent rush of adrenaline.
"I did it! I beat him! Mom! Mom! Mom! Did you see? I beat Dad!"
Another flash and his father is right next him, doubled over and trying to catch his breath.
"No fair!" Peter claims between puffs of air, "He was going through the walls! That's cheating! Tell him it's cheating!"
