4 a.m.

I've slept for 5 minutes, plus the pathetic three hours yesterday morning.

Before that—achey, stretched-out hours of immobility, or necrotic bolts of sleep at inappropriate times of the day.

Time is flowing the way it does during holidays, like sticky molten candy poured over a steel table.

I've checked the baby's breathing 15 times in the last quarter hour. I keep telling myself that he's okay. He's okay. But what if he isn't?

It's blizzarding past my window. I'm not excited about it like I used to be. I may be disillusioned. Or just coiled by the fear

that if I relax, even for a moment, I'll forget who I am (mama) and he'll flip onto his belly and float off through the wind-whipped tree branches.

In the light of day, he's safe. He'll articulate or press his tiny face too close to mine. And I'll tell him that I love him more than anything else I've ever done.

And that may be why I feel scooped-out. There's no room for anything else.

There's no more room.