New Poem

Please help me give it a title

I was thinking about my first birth experience, how I felt so much had been stolen from me in the early days of postpartum. Not time, not lack of autonomy, but my memories. My ability to soak in the ordinary moments that I was tearful through instead. Where feeding made my whole body rigid in pain, jolt with each wakeful jerk in the bassinet. I loved him more than anything, I knew that, but something else sat with me, followed me, weighed me down.

My first books, ‘From One Mom to a Mother’, and ‘All I See is You’, weren’t even written through the lens of me knowing I went through this darkness, I was still making sense of it then, and yet so many reviews thanked me for helping them through their postpartum depression. So many beautiful mothers reached out to me, and I realised I had been carrying something I had never named.

I wish I had given myself more grace then. I wish I could have gone back and whispered that I was always good enough for him, and believed it, that this feeling wouldn’t last.

I was reading some of these messages today and these words found me. Maybe someone is in this now, maybe someone remembers. Sending love, and thank you for reading x

Jess

You arrived purple and screaming like a bruise,
and I forgot who I was yesterday.

My thoughts were all
housefly against window,
flesh and terror.

My brain, a small hopeless thing,
my body broken and alive.

I held your smallness
to my chest,
to the car,
to the bleeding hour of every morning.

I felt love arrive
like I wasn’t even in the room.

I knew every inch of you
and nothing at all.

The sharp notes of night
rattled the cage in my chest
and I would come to you,
heavy bodied down the hall,
pause a moment in your door.

I didn’t know that I would stare at your ruddy cheeks
bursting beneath your woollen hat
and see all of you.

I didn’t know
I would point to every car with you
and pocket your joy forever.

I wasn’t lost with each step
on our frosty walks around the block.

I was slowly coming home.

And I’m sorry.

I was all twisted heart then,
and now it floats,
escapes from my throat
just at the sight of you.

I wish back the slow days sometimes,
to know the darkness would one day become
the flower behind your back,

a growing garden
full of light.