Ama didn’t expect silence to be the loudest part of motherhood.
People warned her about the crying, the sleepless nights, the endless feeding. No one mentioned the quiet — the kind that settles in the room after a long night, when the baby finally sleeps and the world feels like it’s holding its breath.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her son curled against her chest, warm and impossibly light. Seven days old, and already he had rearranged the shape of her life. She was still learning him — the small sounds he made, the way his fingers opened slowly like petals, the soft weight of his head resting on her collarbone.
The morning light crept in gently, as if it knew she was fragile.
Kweku stirred.
A tiny movement. A flutter of his eyelids. A soft exhale.
Then his mouth curved — barely, but enough to stop her breath.
A smile.
Not the kind that meant anything. Not yet. She knew that. The midwife had explained it: reflexes, early wiring, the brain practicing its first expressions. Nothing emotional. Nothing intentional.
But Ama felt something shift anyway.
The smile flickered again, small and unsteady, like a candle flame learning how to stand. And in that moment, something inside her loosened — a knot she hadn’t realised she’d been carrying since the day he was born.
She touched his cheek with the back of her finger, careful not to wake him.
“You don’t even know me,” she whispered. “But somehow… you undo me.”
Kweku didn’t hear her. He drifted deeper into sleep, his face softening back into newborn stillness. But the smile — that tiny, impossible smile — stayed with her, echoing in the quiet.
Ama leaned back, letting her body sink into the mattress. The room was still. The world outside was waking. But here, in this small pocket of morning, she felt something she hadn’t felt all week:
A beginning.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just… present.
A small truth settling into her chest.
Some moments don’t need to mean anything to matter. Some moments are enough simply because they happen.
And as she held her sleeping son, Ama realised this was one of them — a moment that would stay with her long after the smile faded, long after the morning passed, long after she forgot the exhaustion of these early days.
It lingered. Quietly. Gently. Like a secret she didn’t need to solve.
