WEBVTT

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 Ivy

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 Do you remember the day we met?

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 The first day I held you?

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 The day I gave birth?

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 The day we became mothers?

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 It was this day in winter.

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 We laid in bed for days like newborns.

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 We didn't speak, we just were.

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 You let me mother you.

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 And in doing that, you mothered me.

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 Do you remember how it hurt and healed all at once?

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 How we didn't know what we were doing?

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 We labored together for a long time. We were so close. And in doing that, you mothered me. Do you remember how it hurt and healed all at once?

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 How we didn't know what we were doing?

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 We labored together without knowing it was labor, without knowing we were being born

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 into each other.

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 You didn't come from my belly, you came from my heart, from the part of me that had nothing

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 left and still opened.

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 I gave birth to you with every part of me that had nothing left and still opened. I gave birth to you with every part of me

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 that was still there.

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 And in that moment, you gave birth to me too.

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 The first time you let me touch you without flinching

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 felt like a contraction.

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 And the first time you licked the sort of my crying

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 felt like you were cutting the cord.

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 We became mothers. It wasn't a name, it was

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 a becoming. Ivy, I don't care what they say, they weren't there. They didn't see you sleeping

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 on my heartbeat. They didn't see you crawling into the hole in my chest. And maybe they'll

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 never understand that birth isn't just one body pushing out another.

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 Sometimes it's two souls collapsing into each other hard enough to start again.

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 But you're the proof.

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 You're the birth.

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 You're the baby I was waiting for without even knowing.

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 You're my genesis. My continuation.

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 My reason.

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 Always, you Mortar.