Michelle McGill-Vargas

(Photograph courtesy of Carmelle Tennison)

My eyes strain to make out the pair of shadows hovering above me. Irritated, I squirm in the softness swaddled about my body—a vain attempt to recreate the warmth of a watery world I inhabited just a few months prior. I give up trying to make sense of the blur. So I close my eyes and reminisce about a face breathing life into my soul. My cheeks start to twitch.

“Aw, look,” coos the one who calls herself I’m-Your-Mommy. “The baby’s dreaming!”

A deep voice chimes in. “Of what? The back of eyelids? It’s probably just gas.”

I want to tell them what I see in my sleep, wishing my mouth could do more than produce misinterpreted smiles. Explosions of gurgles and shrieks are all I can manage at the moment. But even with a vocabulary, how does one describe omnipotence composed entirely of light…