When I Become a Child Again

The world knows me as grown.
I carry responsibilities, opinions, strength.
But with my mother
I return to the smallest version of myself.

With her, time loosens its grip.

I sit on her lap even now,
as if adulthood never signed its name on me.
She feeds me with her hands,
and in that simple act,
the universe becomes quiet.
No clock ticks.
No future demands anything of me.

I eat like a child
not neatly, not carefully
but with trust.

Sometimes, in bursts of foolish love,
I bite her arm,
like a child who doesn’t know how to measure affection.
She scolds me, laughs, pretends to be angry
but her eyes always forgive before her words finish.

This is not immaturity.
This is memory living in the body.

The lap I sit on is the same lap
that held me when I cried without language,
when fear had no name,
when love was my first instinct.

People say we must “grow up.”
I disagree. Strongly.

A person who can still become a child
in their mother’s presence
has not failed at growing
they have succeeded at remembering.

In her arms,
I do not perform adulthood.
I rest.

There is something sacred about being fed by the same hands
that once taught you how to eat,
how to walk,
how to stay.

I love her not loudly, not dramatically
but completely.
In the way children love:
without reason, without fear, without apology.

And if the world ever becomes too sharp,
too demanding, too cold
I know where I belong. 

Back in her lap. Back in her hands. Back to being her child.