100,000 Versions of the Universe

At 3am I wake again to your crying;
piercing and insistent you urge me
from the warmth of bed into the familiar
darkness of the hallway. Your restlessness
pulls me forward down the now well-worn
path to the doorway of your nursery.

As soon as I lift your small form
from the crib, you lean into my body
and fall quiet; You burrow like an animal,
desperate only for my touch, as if my presence
were your air, your food, your water.
I hold you and we rock in the big gray chair
that was picked out when nights like these
were just a premonition and you were just
a dream growing in the dark soil of my body.

As we rock, you grasp at anything
you can grip in your tiny hand:
my hair, my finger, my ear.
You hold me tight, like a life preserver
as if the raft of one another is the only
thing keeping us from drifting away into oblivion.

Every now and again your eyes open
and you smile up at me with sheer
contentment and joy as if you can't
believe your luck; the same look of someone
who touches their fingers to their lips
after a first longed-for and unexpected kiss.

I think of the 100,000 versions of the universe
that do not contain this exact moment.
A universe where rational thinking compelled us
to wait a day, a month, a year to try to have children.
Another where I heard your cry, but chose
the lure of sleep instead, resting in the knowledge
that you would be fine until morning.
Another where my husband and I never met,
or loved, or chose this particular life and
are instead living in other houses, in other towns,
sleeping in other beds, next to people who are strangers.
Or the universe where you simply slept soundly
on this one night, unstirred by cutting teeth,
or cold toes, or shadows in the corner,
and we are both dreaming our separate
dreams on different sides of the wall.

And so I silently praise the monsters under the bed,
and the stoplights, and the floor plans, and the meaningless words
typed or exchanged over cups of too hot or too cold coffee, and
the hundred doors that opened or shut with such precision, and
the split second decisions and coincidences and happenstances
that all added up to this particular moment,
in this particular chair,
in this particular universe
with you.