Vesna McMaster – Age

‘How’re mum and baby doing today? All well?’ The midwife pats the covers and leans over the silent, close-wrapped bundle. ‘Oh, what a face!’

The mother laughs. ‘I know, right? I feel judged.’

‘Those are eyes that know this world.’

The baby stares back at the midwife as if it’s about to announce her grades in maths. A big, black sombre gaze through lowered lids.

Nine months. One year. Eighteen months. The gaze lands on carers and playmates.

Five, ten, thirteen. ‘An odd child’. 

Fifteen, twenty. ‘A hard worker’.

Thirty two. Skipping stones over time, leaving pictures and memories like circular ripples on the lake surface, skimming towards an urgent, unknown destination.

Until suddenly the stone sinks, losing the improbable energy it had until just now, refusing to take up space in the air any more. It slips from the imagination.

It is impossible to think of lake bottoms as accumulations of stones that are not currently skimming.

One day the waves wash them all back to the shore, and another hand, unknowing, picks one up again.