to nairi
I whisper about how I promise to love you and inspire you and remind you of how truly incredible you are. I whisper about how I promise to teach you what I wish I was taught; I promise to say the right thing, to be there for you when you cry, to give you late night drives to the beach and talk about your fears and your dreams. I whisper and forget for a moment about how sometimes life feels too big to handle. I whisper to potentially no one because I’m speaking to my sister’s pregnant stomach and I feel dumber than I did when I didn’t know where the girl’s bathroom was and instead used the boy’s one in first grade, but I feel like maybe it’s okay.
You scream and you cry and you mumble something unintelligible into your dad’s shoulder and I’m scared to even get close to you, so I back away, so I sit down and talk about what happened in school yesterday, so I try not to think about the late night drives to the beach, I try not to think about how I’m scared of myself, I’m scared of hurting you, I’m scared of not keeping my promises.
You grab my finger for the first time, and I’m still scared, but I stop talking about what happened at school from then on. I carry you for the first time, and I sit with you and watch you try and open a water bottle for ten minutes straight.
You point at my yellow shirt and scream excitedly about how it’s blue, and I let you ruin all of my eyeshadow palettes because they’re colorful and shimmery, and you get it all over yourself, and my sister makes a joke about how I’m corrupting you with my makeup, but I don’t care because you’re so excited about the shimmery purple that I still think of you whenever I wear it on my eyes. If I were to name my makeup looks, I would name that one after you.
You ask for a hug and you give me a kiss on the cheek; you count to three before you slide off the water slide into my arms; you play hide and seek with me and you don’t even bother hiding, jumping out of your spot the second I open my eyes and running towards me; you share whatever you’re eating with me; you ask me to sing with you, and you dance when I play Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star on the piano; you laugh when I pretend to be a monkey, and I look down at your small hands, small smile, small frame, and think about how someone so small can make such a big difference, how someone so small can stop life from feeling so big. I hope to teach you what I wish I was taught but, for now, you can teach me that maybe happiness is not as complicated, as hard to reach, as difficult, as fleeting as everyone makes it out to be. That maybe happiness is in pretending to be a monkey, in whispering irrationally to your sister’s pregnant stomach, in keeping a promise, in ruining an eyeshadow palette and grabbing a finger. Maybe happiness is in loving someone from the moment they’re born in a way that you’ve never loved before, painted in shimmery purple.