Today, at three months and three weeks old,

he musters all his focus,
and reaches out his pudgy, dinner-roll arms towards the target:
a pale-yellow tissue box with green deer and trees and squirrels and foxes on the side.

As he tries to pull out the prize, his brain’s joystick moves his limbs with the precision of a claw machine arm going frustratingly for stuffed toys.

Failure! The tissue is in his grasp, and then lost.
Failure! His arm jerks left, and he misses the tissue altogether.
Failure! The fingers fail to close.

And then, the hand, the eye, the brain all work together to create a successful grip, and with a tug there is the satisfying sound of paper rubbing against the box’s plastic dispenser opening. Another tug, and the tissue comes loose. His eyes go wide.

Success! He waves the white tissue around like a captured flag, and lets out a “Yap-yap-yap-yap-yap” that only abates when he plugs the tissue into his mouth in glorious victory.

Timothy DeLizza lives in Baltimore, MD. During daytime hours, he is an energy attorney for the U.S. government. His fiction has recently appeared in Noema, Southwest Review, and New South. His essays have recently appeared in Undark, Washington Square Review, Salon, and Earth Island Journal.