A Dinner Date with the Universe

Pervasive. He used that word when we went out for dinner. A piece of me 
sitting across the table. He has his birth father’s eyes and my colouring, 
but he has my aunt and uncle’s sense of the world.  

We order the same thing – mirroring each other. We discuss with the same 
dissecting analysis: the food, Star Wars, and words like pervasive. 
It’s his birthday, but I’m celebrating – internally, the arrival of this awaited 
moment. To be with him the way I was when he was three days old, and 
I clung to him knowing it might be eighteen years before I regained the right 
to adore him again. 

I will float on this memory for weeks. Let the heavy ones drop to the bottom 
of my coat pocket with the unwrapped lozenge and crumpled fortune, 
saying, “you are equally as beautiful as the Universe.”

© Marsha Masseau