Milking It

dandelion clock
the soft breath
of my newborn

After you were born a well-meaning friend sent me “nine poems for breast-feeding mums.” She’d drunk the breast milk and said the poems would give me emotional support at this challenging time. But as I read about the “silver boobies award” (like a Golden Globe or six-months—that feels like a lifetime—achievement award for being a milk cow), the contented guzzles to rhyme with nuzzles and the milk made of kisses, neither my breasts nor I were uplifted. I looked down at my mammoth mammaries—veined and pearly like Stilton—and wondered where were the red words to describe latching on? Or the metaphors for nipples that have spread like craters across the surface of the moon? I felt like picking up a pen and putting the record straight, the cracking and the soreness, the mastitis march of fire ants, and the daily battle to pump an inch of succor so I could leave the house for a minute or two. And just as I had that thought it flew away like a bad dream when you opened your eyes and I heard your cry.

milk moon
the relief
of my letdown