Currently I am living in hospital while my twin girls are in the NICU unit. They came early at 33 weeks, and we are fast approaching our third week in hospital. There's a birth story to come, and it will appear over on the motherhood section of the website, hopefully in the next week or so. In the meantime, I have been scrabbling and scribbling bad poetry... late night rambles seeped in milk, tears, postpartum fluids abound. It's pretty fraught times, in many different ways for many different reasons. Things are dualistic, elation and bliss, deep loneliness and sadness. This is not fantastic, it's just what it is, scratched in ballpoint and often disjointed and rambling.
6th July 2016: 8 days postpartum
tears and milk flow
teats and cheeks
trails and rivers
southwards
leaving tracks and traces on their way down
belly wound
deep cuts
hurt words cut deeper
disappointed when I look at you
look and you are not there
phantom
***
empty belly empty core
one moment full and taut
next open and void
open to the elements
flowing with blood and fluid
cords and cords
cut theirs and set them free
fill mine so I cannot feel
I need them to come forth
and be in the world of the living
***
in the lights I saw the reflection
of my passage to motherhood again
I saw the blood and flesh
separate
into a yawning chasm
from which all secrets and knowledge spilt
sacred womb full of bloodlines
adding to the legacy
I saw my body yield
to the drugs
to the knife
to fate and destiny
surrendering and surrendered
the pulling and pressure
giving up the babies into the arms of the world
8th July 2016: 10 days postpartum
milking tits
slackest belly pulling in
smiling scar and
scars unseen.
Alone, almost lonely
but I know the trace
of being with you
and still I am lonely.
You came late at night
and you came for them
I am blank and calm
hurt tears well inside
pricking the surface only now and then
in the warm womb light.
Each time opening my mouth to speak
and closing it again
and knowing to just let go a little more
it's better.
I dream you will betray me
but how can you betray me even more than you have?
Abandoned thoroughly
and constantly reminded
YOU left ME
for good reason (so you say)
justifying
telling me I deserved it
taking your daughters from me
discarding their shell (me)
you are not here for me
you never were.
***
milk flows
and cancels the tears
no more time for listening to the drone of your voice
as it justifies every cruel twist and turn
of the path
of the knife.
milk flows and washes you away
blood flows and cleanses me anew.
they cry and I repent
I confess and start again
washed clean by the milk and blood
each drop one step closer
to letting you go forever.
16th July 2016: 18 days postpartum
weight so heavy
I could be carrying the stars
if only,
i would welcome that, rather than the truth,
weight so cumbersome
the press of your hate.
weight so resolute, restrictive, reductive
it suppresses my milk,
using all my water for tears.
weight so thick
I cannot breathe
for the grief strangles and entangles,
snaking through me
tentacles into my womb
threading through my placenta
sucking it dry
and in a flood and blood
evicting my daughters.
***
- Leala Faleseuga