[ WP ] It 's time I spoke of it ... This is my confession ...

The first time I held you, I was full of fear. They had promised me something magical, some combination of wonder and love like nothing else I would ever experience. 
 Somehow you cheated me even of that, nasty rabbity thing that you were. 
 Your skin was translucent as melted wax, the tick-tock of your pulse blue and insistent at your throat and temples. It throbbed your stubborn *aliveness* through my fingers in a warm Morse code, a communication just between us, but not the kind that was promised. There was accusation in it even then - or perhaps that was just distortion from the postnatal hormones roaring through my body. But no - you opened your glaring eyes and you stuck me through with hateful pins. 
 I felt their stab, I did, I know I did. 
 I did n't want you, and you knew it from that first touch. So perhaps then, all of this was all my fault. I've read that children are blank slates, waiting for us to inscribe with our own half-scribbled-out mistakes. 
 When your infant tongue began to babble through those long, dark nights, when the words crystallised in the curls of my sleep-deprived brain so clear and sharp, were those vicious descriptions of demons by my hand, yours, or one unseen? 
 You fed me more secret messages as you grew, so cunningly encoded in those crayoned lines. Yellow sun the judgemental eye, never closing, always staring over some crude representation of our house. Green grass the creeping acid of your hate for me. You thought I did n't know what you were trying to tell me, but I did. I decoded every one. They're all here in the right order now, all around your bed, and spelling out the truth so that everyone will see what you are. 
 You're sleeping now, and for once you're so blessedly quiet. Your skin is translucent as melted wax, congealing beneath my fingertips. Your cursed pulse is not transmitting any staccato threats. I will sit in peace and wait for them to come. I'll finally tell them about you properly. I can do that, now there's such a beautiful silence. 
 
 

