Liberties

Long ago I was born. There is no one alive anymore who remembers me as a baby. Was I a good baby? A bad? Except in my head that debate is now silenced forever. What constitutes a bad baby, I wondered. Colic, my mother said, which meant it cried a lot. What harm could there be in that? How hard it was to be alive, no wonder they all died. And how small I must have been, suspended in my mother, being patted by her approvingly. What a shame I became verbal, with no connection to that memory. My mother’s love! All too soon I emerged my true self, robust but sour, like an alarm clock.