Suckling made of milk, I am your milkmaid.
I was made into a mother by
your milking it out of me.
Chastened and trapped in the bleak days of your birth.
An off-track planet of two, in near-darkness.
Specter of a cracked egg—I groped to picture hell.
But when you first exhaled
your breath blossomed every tree.
And I came home among flowers, in hobbling triumph,
clutching you as eons went past.
The redbud, the flowering plum, the potato vine.
The pothole, the stop light, the wet steps.
The clouds dispersing, the soaking air, the strike of sun.
That day you were still smeared
with the faint crust of bloody mucus
I'd left on the bridge of your nose.
I liked to see that little shedding melt of the inside
of my body still upon you.
You were born in the thaw, and again it is the season
of flood and bud. Rain cloud, pearled shell, new egg. I crow.
Elizabeth Sullivan is a mama, poet, and environmental and bike activist. Founder of City CarShare and a new venture, Streetline, Elizabeth lives and works in the Mission District of San Francisco with her partner, Gabriel and her son, Jonah.
