Holding a small, bare, baby in the palm of your hand –
          small, fleshy, and lifeless –
                    blue spider webs beneath the cool, pale skin. . .
That’s what I had unearthed,
beneath the watery depths of my name.

We were both on the brink of hypothermia,
slowly dying in the snow by the black creek.
          I found a small hollow of roots beneath a tree,
                    untouched by the white kiss of winter.
I rose to my booted feet, caked in mud.
I splashed, hobbled, and painfully collapsed to my knees,
          my hands cupping the small babe,
as if offering what little we had left to the deaf tree,
before I undressed myself
one arm at a time,
  holding the baby boy up to my bare chest
                    as I pulled my head beneath the collar of my shirt,
                              and flicked the muddy boots off my feet,
                                        and unbuttoned with one hand my wet jeans,
till I was finally naked,
                                        curled up around the small boy who still had a chance.

We huddled there in the ICU beneath the tree
in our small cocoon of earth, snow, and cloth;
and with every exhale, “sorry” escaped my blistered lips.

It was my fault I had found him there
alone and abandoned.

He is the part of me that I feared –
          for and of –
and that I had ripped from inside myself,
leaving it stunted.

But: that cold, saddening, sobering, apologetic embrace
saved my life from being forever incomplete,
and healed the selves
that my actions to protect
had inevitably began killing.

Holding him, that small piece of me,
          the mass of innocence equal to my heart,
holding him is when we became anew.

Today I cherish his fair feminine features
that once puzzled and concerned the mirrors,
and sometimes drape his strong body in dresses
          crowning his mane with wild flowers
so he can twirl and play in the meadow the way he wants .

Today I hold his hand,
          and carry him on my shoulders while he sleeps,
                    slumped, and nuzzled on my head,
as we walk through the world
like a father and son who just finished a day:
          of chasing each other,
                    of wrestling with each other,
                              and of playing hide-and-go-seek for hours.

Today he shows me love and affection
like all men ought to know
like all men ought to show
and teaches me what I had forgotten about myself
          all those years ago.