thirteen : newborn
As far as she could tell, he was nothing before he was Michael.
Just a cell divided. Two. Ten thousand. Six million. Replicating, expanding, shooting out arms and legs, but still nothing. He was a concept. Something unseen. In those first few months she would stand in the bathroom, wiping steam from the mirror and watching, waiting for some sign that he was there. Some sign that the tiny bump she saw was more than the result of a few too many rich desserts in recent weeks. Even later, when she saw the fuzzy grey outline of him on the ultrasound screen, when her stomach bulged out low and heavy, stretching the skin so tight it changed color. Even when the tremors within it grew strong enough to wake her at 4am and send her running to the bathroom—he was a nothing.
Until she had screamed him out into existence, he was a ghost. A whisper no more real than an organ she didn’t know the name for. Until that moment, when the howling pink-faced bundle was handed to her by a bright eyed nurse and she heard her own voice say Michael as if she had known all along, he was nothing.
But now—now he was everything.
