damn drop

By | 16 August 2019

trying to breastfeed in the rain
over my grandmother’s grave
I express more tears than milk.
they run down the face of the smartphone
I hold to my cheek with one stiff shoulder
(half an hour on hold with the woman from Telstra).
I want to tell her “I have lost my milk.”
(my grandmother, I mean
but maybe the Telstra woman will do).

my eyes sting hotter than my daughter’s lips in the cold
and I have a bad latch
and the artificial lake is choked with weed
and I think “I have given suck”
present tense, perfect (meaning past). I have fallen
short, failed the test
set out in pamphlets, manuals, in the mouths of babes
and midwives
and I could dash my brains out
on the calm synthetic marble

where the inscription reads “here lies”
and I am lying, pretending,
trying to breastfeed in the rain,
in the rain, in the hard hard rain:
let it come down

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