We make her in the morning.

In that blue grey house on Martha’s Vineyard. Blue grey and worn by beach winds.

I am awake before him, lying on my side facing his sleeping back. He is shirtless and breathing steadily under skin, under thin blue bed sheet. I count three moles; a constellation I’ve not yet noticed.

The house is quiet this morning and perhaps that’s why he sleeps on. We are vacationing here, on the coast with a close friend.

So far each day has been heralded in by the sound of her bare feet on the floor above us. The tack of dog’s paws overhead, over hard wood floor, and down the stairs in a momentous clamber.

But today the house is quiet. She left yesterday for a weekend in Nantucket. Left yesterday the house to us alone.

I roll onto my back and then onto my side. Slip out of bed and walk to the bathroom on the tiptoes of a honeymooner, still tying not to wake him, still trying to please.

When I return, his eyes are open. He is on his side, but watching me.

I say nothing. Return to bed. He rolls over to face me as I do.

The mornings are our time. We make love inside them to color the day to come.

And this morning, in the color of summer and sea breeze, the child is made.

We fill months moving into a new house for her.

He wears ripped jeans, belted at the waist.

Brings home swatches of color for me to chose from, then rolls thick strips of sky blue onto fresh plaster.

I paint walls, canvases, toenails.

Peel oranges.

Crave music and listen to Carmen over and over, timing my brushstrokes to the lilting of her aria.

We meet her in the afternoon.

I am in the tub when I realize she is coming. The water she breaks on her way blends with my bath; compresses tightly in my center, releases, then flutters expectantly above my heart.

At the hospital they take my name, my purse, my overnight bag.

He is finishing the paperwork, I am walking down a fluorescent hallway, following the midwife. The compressions are contracting inside the space between my hip bones, coming now in twenty minute blocks of time.

The doctor arrives. He wears glasses and in them I see the indistinct reflection of my open body under fluorescent lights and blue cotton gowns.

And he is there, helped into a mask by the assisting nurse. Holding my hand.

He tells me you can do this. Offers thick words of encouragement.

I am not angry but afraid that I’ll not do it right. Push hard enough, let go when I should.

Or that the child will somehow arrive imperfect. I hope that I could love her anyways.

This is it, I hear somebody say. Push. I bend forward, shove shoulder blades together and she slithers out – purple under thin layers of red. Melodic under layers of harsh sound.

For a moment, I cannot see.

Spots cover the space, I drift and then, regain sight.

She is in my arms. I would love her any way.