Lila by night
My daughter lies curled next to me, her warm, softness impressed into my side. Her head rests on my biceps, one thumb jammed into her little mouth, the other thumb and forefinger plucking, plucking, plucking at my elbow. She has developed a predilection for elbow skin. She frantically seeks it out, like an addict – that sweet, bony apex of a crooked arm, so satisfyingly pyramidical, so ripe for the plucking.
The neighbour dropped by the other week. I was standing in the kitchen holding Lila in my arms and I could see my daughter eyeing it up. Almost within reach. That delicious, bony, slack-skin-clad protrusion, waiting to be tweaked by her pliable little fingers.
She wanted it. Her little hand reached out, crossing the void between us to manage a few quick yet satisfying pinches, much to Jane’s delight. Yes. She has a thing for elbows.
But now she lies in the bed with me and has settled into a state of transitory, elbow-lulled rest. If I remove it she will insist indignantly on its reinstatement. So for now, even as I feel the lump of knotted muscles forming in my neck, I let her have her fix.
I feel molten. Like I have transformed into one of her gleaming, caramel curls and I am unwinding down her back. I imagine myself as liquid gold, a rivulet of rich, languid love, seeping between us, along the curved form of her torso, weaving in and out between her tiny, beloved toes.
We do not sleep well together, my daughter and I. Like first-time lovers, intoxicated by each other into the early hours, a delectable and frustrating state of unrest. We each seek a melded closeness that is forever out of reach, and even endless burrowing, nuzzling and repositioning of limbs cannot achieve it. While my body finds precious little sleep, and my mind still races with a world of grown-up worries, my heart is at rest here, with her.
