First Milk

After all that birth, the legs you’ve used your whole life

are now wobbly & the lake where your son used to swim

trickles from between them. The spaces between your fingers

feel sticky. The first thing the baby does is search for the warmth

of   you, his face a small suction cup for the mounds you’ve been

building. Those first golden drops, thick as honey, spill from you

& the nurse rushes to catch them with a plastic spoon. God forbid

they soak your hospital gown or run down your rib cage. Once, you were

a girl with two breasts like the smallest constellation, an incomplete ellipsis.

Today, they find new purpose. Today they are nourishment & comfort,

food, water, some kind of magic. They work so hard after years

of  thinking themselves merely decorative.