By Amy Brumby
You all-encompassing blessing,
you overburdening loveliness,
you time-consuming beautiful boy,
have changed me, given me
an irreversible purpose and reality.
Changed me from lover to mother, from teacher to cleaner,
reader to feeder. Before, I was blooming obvious
to every passer-by intruder, giving ‘you’ an invasive rub
and me, their uninvited two cents.
But now I am under the invisibility cloak of you.
Intense days of skin-to-skin, suckling, slobbering,
Pinching, piercing pain of nutrition and needs met.
Connected like tree and root,
Mumma’s milk is liquid magic,
and it’s all you need. Placid and dramatic.
Endless, repetitive, monotony of
tired, hungry, dirty, bored. Yet I do anything and everything
to turn your howls and screeches into those
drooling, gummy grins that mirror mine,
marvelling at my own creation, my own little Frankenstein.
Nights inevitably come, with each stir and whimper
you reach for me, call to me.
And I come to you, always;
my natural incense reminiscent of your safety cocoon
as your writhing eases under the unyielding moon.
Your midnight gaze: upward, unending, unbroken, unknowing.
Owllike, you are wise beyond your years.
For all you know is our concrete, marshmallow love.
Your innocence knows not of this broken, twisted world
that I unconsciously, savagely plunged you into, unfurled.
So I will cuddle and swaddle and swoon and sing to shield you
from the pathetic politics and cancerous environment that we must endure in.
And once again, I am reminded
that we are just two specks of dust in this universe of ours,
but also the two brightest burning stars.
Amy Brumby is a young English teacher who unexpectedly fell pregnant whilst planning her wedding. Being thrust into family life was the most wonderful surprise. Inspired by Hollie McNish (her collection ‘Nobody Told Me’ is both real and outstanding), she scribbled these words on her phone during the many night feeds of the fourth trimester and she hopes that it encompasses how the journey is both difficult and beautiful. She feels privileged to have breastfed her son for a year now.
