Copyright Jan Steckel, 2002. First appeared in the anthology WomanPrayers: Prayers by Women from Throughout History and Around the World (HarperSF, 2003).
See how she grabs my finger?
Your daughter is strong, what a grasp!
Look how she roots around for the nipple
when I stroke her cheek.
(Let this baby be as perfect inside as outside.
May her heart murmur be as innocent as she is.
Let her not stop breathing one morning for no reason and,
when her mother picks her up from an extra-long nap,
be already cold to the touch.)
Perfectly normal, that's perfectly normal!
Oh, she only has eyes for her mother, see,
she's looking at you!
(Now that this baby girl is delivered, deliver her from infection,
structural defects, neoplasm, metabolic deficiencies, and
from shaking by the boyfriend who is not her father,
from smothering by her mother who needs mothering herself.)
Your daughter is perfect, absolutely perfect!
(More than anything,
let me not have made a mistake.)