Chlorine. The colour of your shirt. Floating on my back at the local pool then, as you sit
beside me, the institutional light softens to candlelight in a salt floatarium and I see ancient
ceilings. You lift me, as if from nowhere. You’re the salt, or the water. Not a hospital bed. The
room is rusty with blood and meconium; formula dust and sour milk drying on nipples. Two
babies is a lot. More than one. You’ll find a way. As I hear this, I wither and flatten into a
hospital blanket small enough for a premature baby. Or two. My threads are intact but I’ve
been washed too many times. I’m stained. You pick me up, peer through my holes, shrug, and
then fold me, so my layers hide the gaps in my weave. I become warmth. Midwives probably
aren’t allowed to do this, but then you hold me to your chest. I am cradled. Each baby is in
their car seat, waiting to go home. How will we do it? I ask. My milk sours like a lemon you
squeeze. My tears are painful pips, birthed—one from each eye. You say: look at us, we are
blanket and baby. I will let you encase me, but you will have to learn how to fail and where
your voids leave me bare. The darkness within you is also a night-lit nursery on a winter’s
evening. There’s blanket, but baby. Blanket, but baby. They are twins.