
To Touch a Pacifier
To touch a pacifier is early object permanence. I have faith and yet I prove it with my body because why not? This is my role as purveyor of all things within the cozy night rectangle—my primary research. While asleep, three of my limbs go wafting as if underwater, a starfish in still life, so charged, it seems to swim as its image buzzes on my mother’s phone screen—it is only the rearranging of pixels under plexiglass, yet it comforts her. Although now my one finger and two toes bridge the gap to touch a pacifier, I am told I will learn to understand that things do not disappear when I can’t see them, that proximity is not the only proof of existence. Yet, I must be viewed relentlessly while asleep to prove my being to two adults who say words like eventually. . . as if forever is a concept they misplaced when they happened upon temporary.