Jessica Barlevi
[After the first child, I knew]
After the first child, I knew. The prize at the end of the pregnancy is not the child. It is the stay. On the maternity ward. Where it is warm and dim and calm. Where they hand out stool softeners like candy. Sparingly. Placing one small capsule on the lifeline of your palm. Meaty smell of afterbirth, resins risen from decay, dank earth. The hush of the hall. A lone woman looks lost. Like she’s woken from a coma, inhaled smelling salts. Inside the cove of her floral robe she holds a bag of frozen peas to her stone-hard breasts. She recollects flesh. I want to tell her: Send baby to the nursery. Waive away all consultants of milk. Their cold scolds, scrubs, chapped hands, fixation to latch and attach. As if one could detach from the screaming being, shared blood, capped and wrapped, strapped into its carrier, soft as a package, minus the twine. In the maternity ward, the security is high. No one could touch me for days.
Jessica Barlevi’s poetry has appeared in Rattle, -ette Review, The Tusculum Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. She resides in New Hampshire.