(in love)

When Isabel sleeps, her eyes water. As she lifts her face off my breastbone, I feel the soft droplets from her eyelashes resting on me now. She looks up at me with quiet eyes, her mouth working her pacifier with a rapidity like that of a rabbit tweaking its nose. Later these eyes will squint up and twinkle in concert with her devilish, enrapturing grin. Her voice will chirp as she asks me, “Que es eso? Que es eso?,” directing the question each time toward a different object or image. She will clumsily at first but soon readily repeat each word I tell her in English, stumbling on her r’s so gleen becomes gween but never green. She is a sponge for the two languages she is learning, for actions and expressions and ways of being. She will no longer wish to nap in her bed now that she has napped atop her tia, me nestled comfortably into a rocking chair, she sprawled against me, knees bent beside my hips, arms resting under mine, face pressed to a part of my body that I previously had thought of as a zone of sensuality; but now I understand it to be more. Not as a place to quell hunger, as I struggle with the concept of ever being suckled like an animal; but as a place of rest. I am reminded of how, as a child, I enjoyed hugging my maternal grandmother a little more than anyone else because she had a bosom so ample it served as a pillow for my cheek as I wrapped my arms around her. Not nearly so plush, my own breastbone seems to suffice for Isa, who shortly blinks those damp eyes at me again and then closes them, returning to my chest. She will no longer wish to nap in her bed. I will no longer wish to let her. I am in love with her, this little niece of mine who lives a continent and an ocean away. I have traveled all that way away from her now, but I can still feel the warmth of her body hug, see the slow smile that spreads when, eventually, she rubs her eyes free of tears and climbs out of the chair.