Extracted.

1. The desire to write, necessitates the need to sit down.

2. August feels immediate.

3. To trip over things, to not know how to use the ice-dispenser at Subway. Inelegant, unattuned, over the verge of a Britney Spears breakdown.

4. I contain memories of your identity; fluid, forgotten. Selected bits from different moments merge, re-envisioned - I am nostalgic.

5. The baby coos in Aaliyah's Are You That Somebody. An indulgent reminder to the possibility of a casual intercourse or intimacy.

6. Text messages I don't reply to because no mental space/time.

7. The routine of a yearly birthday reflection. What have we become in order to leave what we have no control of?

8. To limit on caffeine. To wonder why young bud kept waking up through the night - maybe it's my milk, maybe it's the teeth erupting, painful. Maybe the fart, maybe the cold. Maybe maybe no answer to all these nights I have not slept through for the last two years. An affirmation, I tell myself - this will pass, child will grow.

9. To be guessing the words your child tells you. To marvel at cement trucks, dump trucks, crane, truck vrooom vrooom vrooom (in the style of young bud), vans, diggers, excavators, buses, trains - to long for his small hands, to hear the utterances, small steps making way to look for you.

10. You have lived on this earth for 21 months. May we offer you gentleness in the way that it makes you feel safe. To remind myself as I hug you through your disappointment, to mindfully say "You are safe with me". That I will not harm. 

11. "They see me rollin'. They hatin'."

12. These are extracts.