The Baseline

Every morning, I wake you the same way.

Smiling.
Soft-voiced.
With songs I made and never wrote down.

This is the baseline. The part of me that does not turn off.

If you wake crying, furious at the light, or clinging to sleep as if it might be taken from you, you are met with the same things: arms that hold, words that slow the room, a voice that knows how to stay gentle. I do not ask you to explain yourself. I do not ask you to be easier.

I do this whether I have slept or not. Whether my eyes burn from crying, whether my body feels unsteady, whether I wake already empty.

The ritual does not care how I arrive at it.

It only asks that I remain.

After the holding, after your breathing slows and your feelings settle into your body, we move to the changing table.

This part always comes next.

The drops. The brushing. The things you dislike most.

I tell you I understand. I tell you I love you. I tell you I have to do this anyway, because care is not always kind in the moment, and because some pain has to be prevented before it exists. I tell you I don’t want you hurt later for something I was too gentle to insist on now.

When it’s over, I thank you. I kiss your cheeks. I tell you I’m proud of you whether you cooperated or resisted, whether you noticed me at all.

I change you. I rinse the toothbrush. I set you in the bouncer and wait for the signal that you’re finished with it—sometimes minutes, sometimes longer.

Only then do I move quickly.

The restroom.
The pill.
The pump.
Whatever food I can reach.
Cold coffee, because it’s there.

I do this in pieces, listening for you the whole time.

My phone fills itself with images of you.

I keep them because I’m afraid of how quickly you change—how a long day can still end with you suddenly bigger than you were when it began. I want proof. Of the smiles. The curiosity. The humor. Of you as you are, before you become someone else.

You are wonderful. I am grateful in a way that feels too large to carry properly.

There is no equivalent record of me. My hair stays unwashed. My meals are interrupted and abandoned. Rest exists only as a rumor, something that might happen later if everything else goes right.

You remind me of myself, but translated. The softness, the awareness, the way you feel the room before you move through it. You reach for closeness without hesitation.

When you lift your arms, I take you. Always. I hold you. I sway with you. I sing. I press my mouth to your forehead and trace your cheek until your body loosens against mine.

These things mattered to me once, too.

I remember reaching for them and learning they would not come. Being told that touch was unnecessary. That affection belonged to someone else’s family.

You will not learn that lesson.

Not from me.

Somewhere between the first song and the last kiss, I stop checking whether I am still here.

Days pass marked only by your changes—new sounds, new weight in my arms, new ways you look at me as if you are studying something you expect to last. I learn to measure time by you instead of by myself.

When I catch my reflection now, it feels incidental—like evidence no one asked for. Like something I forgot to retrieve.

I do not miss it enough to go back for it.

Some days I notice how carefully everything is arranged around you. The rooms remain quiet. The schedule bends. My body adapts in small, unrecorded ways. I learn how to carry weight unevenly, how to sleep in fragments, how to stay alert even while resting.

Pain becomes background noise. I catalog it without urgency. There is no time to decide whether it matters.

When I imagine asking for help, the thought arrives already tired. I rehearse the words and feel them dissolve before they reach my mouth. I have learned that need does not always invite care. Sometimes it only exposes it.

So I adjust again.

I learn how to become sufficient.

I tell myself this is temporary. That this is only a season. That love carried without relief cannot stay this concentrated forever. Still, the ritual continues, indifferent to my predictions.

It has learned my shape.

It knows how much of me it can take without breaking the surface.

At night, the ritual changes shape.

You sleep against me, heavy and warm, your breathing even. I stay still longer than my body prefers. My back aches. My arms go numb. I do not adjust. I have learned the cost of waking you, and I pay it in advance.

Sometimes I cry without sound, careful not to disturb the pattern we’ve built. My face presses into your hair. The salt of it disappears there. You never stir.

There is no version of this where I tell you what I carry. I will not give you my fear to hold. I will not ask you to be the thing that steadies me.

When the room goes quiet enough, my thoughts grow louder. I think about how fragile everything is. About how much of this depends on my body continuing to function. About what would happen if it didn’t.

I make plans I hope I’ll never need. I do not write them down.

There are people I no longer call. Not because I don’t want them, but because wanting has proved unreliable. Reaching out has taught me what silence sounds like when it answers back.

So I stay.

I perform the ritual precisely. I hold you through the night. I become the structure that keeps the day from collapsing.

There is no one assigned to do this for me.

In the morning, I wake you the same way.

One day, you will not need this ritual.

I don’t know yet what will happen to the part of me it replaced.

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