For thirteen whole minutes I’m free, just a girl, not a mom, windows down, Sabrina Carpenter on, a purse that is in no way a diaper bag in the front seat. Other drivers might look over into my car and think, nothing to see there. They might say, what a regular looking lady going somewhere alone in her Volvo. Besides some breastmilk stains on my shirt and the car seat in the back and a few black and white cards in the cupholder and the little car seat mirror and the rear window shade and the stroller in the trunk and the emergency wipe stash in the back and the crust in my hair and the pad in my crotch and the existential panic in my eyes there’s absolutely no signs that I’m a mom who has just left her child for the first time. And that’s freedom, baby. I’ve been waiting for this moment, total autonomy, absolute solitude, a brief return to the former self, that’s what Mommy needs. except that, Mommy also needs the baby, constantly my body is reaching for the baby, in the night I wake up to find my torso leaning towards the bassinet like the needle of a compass, neither of us quite understanding that we’re two separate beings yet, both of us coping with our separateness with offensive noises and small acts of bodily violence. For now, we’re in that together. But that’s the tough part, I know this as I drive away from Him now: that my body will never learn, but his will, his already is, already he reaches for the tips of his feet and the ends of shiny things like a boy reaching for his own life, already my body contracts in anticipation of this, and there’s nothing to do but cheer maniacally during tummy time and track his every last poop in the app and tend, biannually, to the matter of the bleeding gums.