When they’re little,
they make your arms ache,
with the heft of them,
the warm, wriggling certainty
that you are the whole horizon
they know how to trust.
You learn the choreography
of lifting and lowering,
the sway that soothes,
the half asleep hum
that says stay, stay, stay.
Your body becomes
a harbour,
a hinge,
a place where small storms
break and settle.
You carry them
through doorways,
through tantrums,
through the long nights
when the world feels too sharp
for such soft skin.
And then,
quietly,
as if time were a tide
you didn’t notice rising,
they grow.
When they’re big,
they make your heart ache,
with the distance they must travel,
with the questions you can’t answer,
with the choices you can’t lift
out of their hands.
You learn a new choreography:
the stillness of watching,
the discipline of stepping back,
the strange ache of pride
and fear
woven together like threads
you can’t separate.
Your love becomes
a lighthouse,
a long-distance blessing,
a steady beam
they may or may not follow
but always know is there.
You carry them
in the quiet places,
in the pause before sleep,
in the sudden memory
of their small hand gripping yours,
in the way your breath catches
when they walk away
toward a life
you helped build
but cannot inhabit.
This is the secret truth
no one warns you about:
that love begins
as something held in your arms
and ends
as something held in your chest,
heavier,
vaster,
and impossible to put down.
For when they’re little,
you ache with the weight of carrying them.
When they’re big,
you ache with the weight of letting them go.
And both aches,
in their own way,
are the shape of love
doing its lifelong work.