and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.

I handed over my clothes and took its uniform,

its dressing gown and undergarments, a cardigan

soft as a creature, smelling of birth and milk,

and I lay down in Motherhood's bed, the bed I had made

but could not sleep in, for I was called at once to work

in the factory of Motherhood. The owl shift,

the graveyard shift. Feeding cleaning loving feeding.

I walked home, heartsore, through pale streets,

the coins of Motherhood singing in my pockets.

Then I soaked my spindled bones

in the chill municipal baths of Motherhood,

watching strands of my hair float from my fingers.

Each day I pushed my pram through freeze and blossom

down the wide boulevards of Motherhood

where poplars bent their branches to stroke my brow.

I stood with my sisters in the queues of Motherhood –

the weighing clinic, the supermarket – waiting

for its bureaucracies to open their doors.

As required, I stood beneath the flag of Motherhood

and opened my mouth although I did not know the anthem.

When darkness fell I pushed my pram home again,

by lamp-light wrote urgent letters of complaint

to the Department of Motherhood but received no response.

I grew sick and was healed in the hospitals of Motherhood

with their long-closed isolation wards

and narrow beds watched over by a fat moon.

The doctors were slender and efficient

and when I was well they gave me my pram again

so I could stare at the daffodils in the parks of Motherhood

while winds pierced my breasts like silver arrows.

In snowfall, I haunted Motherhood's cemeteries,

the sweet fallen beneath my feet –

Our Lady of the Birth Trauma, Our Lady of Psychosis.

I wanted to speak to them, tell them I understood,

but the words came out scrambled, so I knelt instead

and prayed in the chapel of Motherhood, prayed

for that whole wild fucking queendom,

its sorrow, its unbearable skinless beauty,

and all the souls that were in it. I prayed and prayed

until my voice was a night cry,

sunlight pixellating my face like a kaleidoscope.

Spindled-a slender round rod or stick with tapered ends by which thread or yarn is twisted in spinning by hand and on which it is wound

-Queendom

-Pram

-Department of Motherhood

-"I prayed and prayed"

1. Holding my daughter, my firstborn in the hospital and being terrified that I would do something wrong. I remember strugling to nurse and her crying after being in labor for 14 hours and am emergency section. I remember how helpless and alone I felt when the nurse brought me formula because she wouldn't latch successfully.

2. I remember seeing my daughter hold her brother for the first time at only three years old. I remember being worried that I couldn't love them both the same or as much as the other. I remember feeling so relieved when my son nursed in the recovery room after he was born.

3. I remember sitting on the couch with my last child, another son and crying because it was the last time. I remember holding him close and smelling him and memorizing every wrinkle in his forehead. A blonde hair blue eyed boy who completed our family.

the sweet fallen beneath my feet –

Our Lady of the Birth Trauma, Our Lady of Psychosis.

I wanted to speak to them, tell them I understood,"