Before my baby had a skull, she was a red fingerprint on the back of my hand. And I loved my baby. When I kissed her, she smelled like a very rare berry.

My baby grew into a rash. I stopped bathing, would not harm her. I loved my baby and I loved the smell she made come from my body.

Red lint came from out of me: from the holes in my face and holes lower in my body. I kept the lint in a small glass bottle with a wooden cork. I opened the bottle and smelled the inside of it when I felt sad. I smelled it when I felt poor.

The rash began to consolidate into a sore. The sore was round and engorged: a red bump at the center of my spine. I wore soft, loose fabric and slept on my stomach.

When my baby softened into a red hole, I felt heartened. The hole lived above my belly button. It felt so good and clean, to be tethered to something.

I reached into the hole above my belly button. Inside the hole was a Ziploc bag of kittens. The Ziploc bag of kittens was my True baby. There were seven kittens: one gray, two orange, two black, and two spotted. The seven kittens purred and hopped and licked each other's teeth.

There was so much of my baby coming out of me, and so much of me coming out of my baby.

The kittens got smaller and smaller. I worried I would lose them. I worried so much I would lose them, I almost wished I'd never had them.

I became so sick with babies. I did not know who I should love: my baby, or my True baby, or the kittens, which were the True baby, but as they shrunk, became like another, third thing.

I did not know who I should love: the window, or the patch of light, or my stomach when I touched its skin and prayed it would not become big and like my mother's, full of baby.

When my baby's skull formed, I was relieved. The kittens and the Ziploc bag became one thing. It was bone. The hole in my stomach closed and I knew that my baby was here: in the skull.

When my baby got sick inside of me, I went to get a sonogram. The doctor said my baby had been through a lot to get to me.

The rest of my baby formed around the skull. The undersides of her palms were caked with matted brown fur. I pressed the fur-palms to my face and closed my eyes. I imagined the fur-palms were two mitted hands, pressed to my face, excited to ice-skate.

I'll hold onto the wall, I said to my baby. I will move very slowly. But I'll watch you skate.

Erika Walsh is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Alabama and co-founding editor of A Velvet Giant, a genreless literary journal. Erika's creative writing has been featured in Hotel Amerika, Booth, Hobart, Poetry Online, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residencies from Sundress Academy of the Arts and Art Farm Nebraska, as well as a fellowship from Brooklyn Poets. Erika works at an independent bookstore and lives with her partner, her cat, and various houseplants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Morgan Barrie is an artist and photographer based in the Midwest. She studied at Columbia College Chicago, where she received her BA, and Eastern Michigan University, where she received an MFA in Photography in April 2013. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She currently works from a studio in Menomonie, Wisconsin and is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art & Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.