Watched

I feel like I am in a museum and you are some age-old artefact. I can look at you, marvel at the way you are built, breathe in your beauty, desire you with all my being but I cannot touch you or make you mine or take you home. So I simply stare at you mesmerized soaking in every detail that my eyes can gather and you remain unaware, like some object distanced from me by history.

I imagine the day she conceived you. How happy she must have been -- her first child! She must have waited and waited to tell her husband. The first time she put her hand on the bump that was you. The first time she felt you move, felt you kick. And the day you decided, you couldn't stay inside her anymore. You had to come out. The first time she took you in her arms and stared at your round, shiny face. You smiled at her the same smile that I smile at every day. She had smiled at it too. I know. I think I was there.

She couldn't help kissing your soft, blushing cheeks every now and then. You were that cute. The day you held the balcony and rails and hauled yourself up and took your first shaky, unstable steps, I remember the way you laughed, your baby teeth peeping out of that happy baby face! You still have that face; you know, the round, chubby, baby face.

The first day you went to school -- no kid has ever been happier about going to school than you were. You wanted to learn how to read. I know. That same year you got that red bicycle. How much you loved it! I am sure you did. Till you started growing up and realised you weren't so much of an outdoor person. You took to reading and I watched you read every page of the many books that you read. I saw you frown at some. I saw you think. And I also saw the occasional tear that rolled into the pillow. When you fell ill, I watched you then too. I watched you breathe. I watched your dreams and fought with you, the dark.

Remember the time the teacher told you how brilliant your English essay was? I was there and I wanted to tell you that I always knew you were good. I saw you grow up from a little baby to a fine young man. I watched you go to college. I was there when you took the first puff of smoke and inhaled your first weed. I stood by and saw you fall in love. I saw you touch a woman for the first time in your life and make love to her. I didn't say a word. I just watched. Museum, remember? She left. I still watched as you packed every ounce of love and thrust it in some inaccessible corner.
I see you every day, working, reading, writing and I cannot help but remember that little baby that still lives in you. And I am tired of being in the museum.