“Changing Table,” by Meghan O’Rourke

The thing about children is: they disappear. They disappear as they appear. More themselves, less yours. Here the baby is on the table, kicking his silken, pillowy legs, looking you in the eyes, squirming, farting, smiling. Their past, leaving them for good, is ever more with you- a kind of distributed emptiness fills the rooms where they used to coo and call ma , ma , ma . Bins of plush, sticky animals, a grimy wooden stove, silence where the current of play once flowed. Now I hear traffic streaming into the future and the lost birds, the cardinal and the mourning dove, too.

Preview: ~104 words