Wet Nurse
Dry bones of babies
Lie crumbling to dust
Disintegrating into fragments
Feeding the soil beneath
She holds another's child to her breast
Feeling the tug of its lips on the nipple
Of her heart…a strong current of connection
From the warm vibrant skin of life in her arms
To the desert of death where her own infants lay.
How does it feel to have the rich, fertile, vibrancy of life
drawn from the center of her own living skeleton
Now nourishing a breathing child she did not bear
Who enslaves her after stealing the life from her loins
The milk from her breasts…actual living pieces of her...
now mere memories
The sky is weeping as I write these words,
strong gusts of grief
raining down upon this earth,
raging in ancient
lamentation at the injustice and the trauma.
We carry the memories of these dark baby corpses…
A woman's inmost heartbreak etched in forever scars
across our psyche and our society.
They continue to pulse and throb in pain and fury,
festering here in the future where
those children would have been.
Kathy A Stilwell
This is a powerful poem, heartbreaking to read. And it brought forward awareness for me of something that I didn't know about. Thank you.
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