71119

it’s morning

I’m sitting here feeling the weight

of my maiden’s breasts in my hands

trying

to imagine what they would feel like

pendulous and heavy with milk

how it would feel to nourish a baby

with these

because I’ve fed children

but never from my own body

everyone talks about the great connection it forges,

breast-feeding a baby

when does that tie grow weak?

fray

sever?

and who feels it more

the child or the mother?

I let down my hair, cascading, around my shoulders

covering me

I wish it could hide me

an invisibility cloak

sheltering me so that blows

physical and emotional

may miss their mark

instead of lodging,

an aching arrow,

between my breasts

I want to rip it out, this arrow,

tear it from my flesh

break the shaft over my knee

and hurl the point far away from me

so I never have to feel it again

but I am afraid

that in removing it

I may destroy my own heart

or worse, that I might see,

reflected on the razor-sharp point,

myself

and what is yet to be

so what do I do with this

this bond

forged in the womb and stretched across the years

it used to be strong

stronger than reason

now all I can see are the holes, the innumerable patches,

tattered and hoary with age

culminating finally with this arrow

this wretched arrow

in my heart