The things I'll save her from

Lately I’ve lost count of the number of things that leave me breathless.

Times have changed. When she was born, I used to hold her close to my chest, whisper sweet secrets into her ears; those warm, damp ears that smelled of tea-tree and baby powder and the pages of a book. She used to lie between us, a parent on either side, caught in the most beautiful, perfect piece of circuitry known to mankind. There is something angelic, something godly, about feeling the breath of your child on the back of your hand. It feels like salvation. It feels like first love again. 

When she grew, I wanted to wrap her in cotton wool, pad the floors, bubble-dome her face, hold her hand so she would never step in the wrong places, never talk to the wrong people. Her body became the most breakable thing conceivable. Imagination played cruel tricks. I held her hand so tight that sometimes the heat of her fingers in mine transcended the boundary of epidermis and entered my blood. We’d sit like this, the love carving moments. 

She went to college. I wanted to protect her from all the most excruciatingly brilliant things: the way it feels to have a boy whisper God’s name between your shoulder blades. The way the world flips like a ferris wheel on your first high. The butterflies in your stomach before the school ball, the number of things you learn when you share a flat. 

Sometimes I think I’ve lost her. That somewhere on my lists, I forgot to write her name. That maybe, I wasn’t enough. I look at her cheeks, I kiss them. 

I forget.