mucous mother

You never told me
I was anything but beautiful
so this feeling—that maybe I'm made
of oil instead of breast milk—
is a betrayal of what you gave me.

I've been obsessing over the contents
of the diaper
of the second grandchild
you never met:
the shit, the lack of it, the holding back
of something ugly.

Was that slick brown thread
mucous, a red flag
according to the nice lady
on the nurse line?

Was it me, a sort of gollum,
a mirror in a diaper,
a monster, but tiny and powerless?

Photo by Mahdi Bafande on Unsplash

The second child in our family—
my first family, I mean, of origin, as they say—
is the only person who holds a mirror
up to your ghost, the only person
who could say "Oh honey" the way you did.

Her curly hair, her kindness.

But I hated her at first. 

Another firstborn might declare the baby
to be the monster, the interloper,
but I stepped into that role myself
just like I stepped into the baby sweater 
I'd long outgrown.

The yellow acrylic yarn was itchy,
yet somehow just right.

Made for a creature so, so small.

What I deserved.

I could do big-girl things and so I did.

Later I got good grades,
worked myself to the bone,
and let you soothe me when I broke;
you were the one who told me I wasn't
a monster; you were the reason (not your fault)
I thought I was.

Motherhood poems are all blood and breast milk.

I am all surgery and paperwork.

I am a trick funded by a bridge called someone's back,
bat wings instead of feathers,
a slick petty thing in the night,
making off with someone else's baby
like a fairytale villain.

If the stepmom is bad news, what of the
woman who bought the baby
with her father's money,
from another good and devastated woman,
who wears her brother's ashes
on a chain around her neck?

This belief is a chain around my neck;
each day that I awake and mix formula,
read a book about spiders with my firstborn,
who is his first mother's second born,
is a captain's log in a parallel universe:
We are fine, we are whole, 
we are planning futures.

We are so sorry.

We are so monstrous.

We cry like babies until our sinuses swell with mucous.

We are so functional we sometimes forget to breathe.