The document gently slides out of the machine and lands on the plastic dock.
It reads that I will become someone else's baby for the last year of my childhood.
She holds the document close to her face because she is near-sighted and teary,
And I push the pen across the surface in her direction.
This is what a mother knows to do:
Carry the small thing.
Similar to how she held me when I was four And wiped the hay fever out of my nose with her sherpa jacket.
The room waits quietly for her to sign me off.
I stare at my hands, ashamed to be prying myself out of her arms.
The pen clicks.
This is what a mother knows to do:
Carry the small thing.