It doesn’t feel holy. The days are jagged and raw, my body
a puffed sack, the nights a ripped-open skin. All sense of order
stripped off. The baby teaches me I am not what I thought. Not
patient, not loving, not an endless fount of joy. I’m a spigot. I’m a body
holding a body but we’re strangers to each other. I don’t feel
like anyone’s mother. He lifts his head, then drops it down against
my collarbone, then screams. I’d thought that motherhood would be
a good machine, a wheel and pulley whooshing out the dark
and sinful parts of me, leaving only love for baby’s doughy hands,
his lightbulb toes. I’m the bad one. I’m a sack of rot. When the baby
finally sleeps I stand against the doorway weeping. I’d thought