ELIAS
The first time I held her, I forgot how to breathe.
Not in the clichéd way people describe when they see something beautiful, but in the way your chest actually locks up, ribs clenching around your heart, as if your body needs a moment to understand that something sacred has just happened.
She was so small, so impossibly, breathtakingly small.
And yet, in that tiny form, she carried the weight of everything I didn’t know I wanted until I saw her, until I felt her and until she looked at me.
No, she didn’t really look at me, her eyes barely fluttered open, but that didn’t matter. I looked at her, I saw her and I broke open.
They handed her to me like it was nothing, like I wouldn’t come undone the moment her warmth touched my chest. I took her, trembling, terrified I’d drop he
