Never will it be so easy, my sister said, to calm your child down. She comes bringing my son to me. I am bleary tired. It is the first few days, when you sink
or tread water—perfectly flanged lips, just like Dr. Sears says, he made swallowing sounds—pulling it out of me—and then milk in his belly, passed out. I was afraid
to move, he nursed constantly when he was awake. My husband’s mother came to visit the first few weeks after his birth. Mira, she told her sister, rummaging
around in the refrigerator for the two ounces of milk pumped after I fed
him, Tia shook her head. Both of them clucked their tongues, Que Flaquito she whispered to my husband. She’s starving my baby! my mother-in-law wanted to feed
baby formula from a bottle. Not enough, not enough my breast pump said. Too exhausted to explain the benefits— and how I knew that he would be my only
after the death of his sister at thirty- six weeks when I wept in the bathtub and my breasts sprayed in sympathy. I knew that there would not be another and so
I took him strapped to my chest nursing all the while to walk the pier just us two.
*
Drenched
Now, you wake up in a swamp of sweat. It only happens near the heart, your beaded sweat could make a necklace. The sweaty curls at on the back of your neck could launch a thousand ships. Your entire torso
becomes slick every night, doesn’t matter what you have or haven’t eaten, doesn’t matter if you’ve done yoga or taken a shower before bed, you wake up crabby, your T-shirt dripping, and change,
twice a night. Maybe the husband has left the bed because you snore, so you roll on to his side. You sleep in comfort for a time, but then it starts again. You sleep in a puddle, a stream, Lake Michigan. Did everybody
know except you? Your doctor laughed when you told her that you soaked the sheets every night. Oh, that. Yes. It’s all part of the change. Your aunt set out an Our Bodies Ourselves book when you visited
the Bethesda family twice a year, but Dad said it was sin to know your bodies. The book said masturbation and held forth no shame. You didn’t know the term, perimenopause. You were shielded
from the knowledge of how your body was going to change. You thought that period was blue because Florence Henderson soaked an Always pad with blue liquid in her commercials and when you finally got your period,
asked yourself what the frick is this? (You would have never said fuck in those days.) Did they talk about these symptoms in the sex ed classes? The ones that your parents refused to let you go to? You wake up drenched
and change T-shirts and another and another and the sheets are soaked through. You don’t change them every time, you just pull back the covers and let the fan have at it because you will only sweat in the clean sheets. Is that horrible? You
can’t change the sheets and risk your back and so you have to rely on your son who’s sixteen and a love and he will be glad to do it if asked but look these sheets have just been changed, and already a wet indentation, a drenched pillowcase.
*
Anna Abraham Gasaway (She/Her) is a stroke-surviving, disabled writer that has been published or has upcoming work in the Los Angeles Review, Literary Mama, Corporeal, The San Diego Poetry Annual and others. She reads for Poetry International at San Diego State University, where she recently received her MFA with an emphasis on Poetry. She can be found on Twitter @Yawp97.
