First Milk
by: D.A. Baker
**Content warning: Suicide or self harm**
My nursing the children was supposed
to be a joke. I said it from inside my
politics, to prove myself in other ways—
for the years of steaming car hoods I would
cower to. My son still slides his hand
inside my shirt; I’m ashamed to say
how old.
to be a joke. I said it from inside my
politics, to prove myself in other ways—
for the years of steaming car hoods I would
cower to. My son still slides his hand
inside my shirt; I’m ashamed to say
how old.
My fault for wanting two so close together.
Thatfirst night we tossed, his mother
groaning open through early pangs
of labor. I felt I had to offer him
Something.
The daughter has since taken to other
pullables. She latches to my sad stretch
of elbow, makes eye contact with
strangers on the light rail.
I’m one now with the mothers, brunching.
We pass mimosas, talk bodies and what
these years have wrought. Not really.
I’m thinking of Andrew, who swam in teeshirts
through his teens, who took a pocket knife
to his own self, to drain the puff
right out.
I forgot to say how I tried too. How I
tapped them like trees in Mom’s good
bathroom lighting. How I squeezed and squeezed,
possessed, until something good in me
came out.
About the Author
“For a long time, I only wrote prose. But over years of teaching writing to high schoolers, I’ve also had to make enough sense of poetry to teach it in a sensible way. In time, its music has wormed its way into me. Now I find myself thinking in lines. These are some of my first.” – D.A. Baker