My First Weeks
Sometimes, when I wonder what I’m like, underneath,
I think of my first two weeks, I was drenched
with happiness. The wall opened
like liquid, my head slid through, my legs, I
pushed off, from the side, soared
gently, turned, squeezed out
neatly into the cold illuminated
air and breathed it. Washed off, wrapped,
I slept, and when I woke there was the breast
the size of my head, hard and full,
the springy drupelets of the nipple. Sleep.
Milk. Heat. Every day
she held me up to the window and wagged
my fist at my sister, down in the street, who
waved her cone back at me so
hard the ice cream flew through the air like a
butter-brickle cannonball,
otherwise it was sleep and milk,
by day my mother’s, by night the nurses
would prop me with the bottle. Paradise
had its laws – every four hours and not
a minute sooner I could drink, but every four
hours I could have the world in my mouth.
Two weeks, and then home, to the end of the hall,
where at night a nurse would give me four ounces of
water every four hours, and in the meantime I shrieked for it.
They knew it would build my character,
to learn to give up, and I learned it – dawn
and the satiny breast, the burp, the boiled
sheet to be placed on where my sister couldn’t touch me,
I lay and moved my arms and legs like
feelers in the light. Glorious life!
And it would always be there, behind those nights
of tap water, the whole way back,
that fortnight of unlimited ration,
every four hours – clock of cream
and flame, I have known heaven.