black dawn
notes from a rageful mother
Dear Reader—
A baby was lifted from a slit in my low belly, and I was already behind with work.
So, I wrote with my newborn son strapped to my tender chest.
I wrote with one hand while he fed from me.
Sometimes my partner read my work aloud and I called out for commas and semicolons.
I fed my son with my body, and then I got up at 5am to write against the clock of my refilling breasts.
In this way I met a deadline six weeks after he was born.
The postpartum body at six weeks is a thing to see.
My maternity leave, such as it was, ended after four months.
And then, nothing much.
Emails came, and they were months late. Often, the sender would confess they’d taken my son’s arrival as an excuse to ‘take their time’.
By and by, I realised I’d been dropped from various, ongoing gigs.
But I’m here, I would say to the morning, which is still black at 5am in February.
I’m here.
Nothing much.
There are many days when I think, Now that I’m a mother, no one cares what I have to say.
I write stories in which women revel in their bodies, sup of their womb’s own blood while it’s still warm.
I look at those women, and I look at myself.
Would you toughen the fuck up?
My partner reminds me I am not sleeping.
He reminds me I have not slept for more than three and a half consecutive hours for two years and three months.
Is my sleeplessness the problem, rather than a deep and rooted wrongness with the world?
Has my exhaustion withered my writing?
Have I lost my sleek grip on my prose?
Surely, I’d have noticed—noticed my heart falling out on the loud and sun-struck road.
I list writing mothers I admire.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Kate Zambreno
Bhanu Kapil
Did they write while congealed milk hewed their nipples to the weft of their shirts? Did they write while blood bloomed inside their knickers because they had only this hour and the nature of an hour is to lessen minute by minute by minute?
Did they live through such an interlude?
I say ‘interlude’, what I mean is—I waste my writing time by praying it is an ‘interlude’.
This hour will soon be dead at your feet.
Pick your truth:
You write weird shit. It’s not for everyone.
You have been castrated by motherhood.
When people look at you, they see a milky eunuch where perhaps before they saw the shape of a writer—or, at least, her flexing outline.
There are better days when I look at myself—this knowing flesh—and I have not met a stronger body.
I beat my wings at the crested sun.
I howl at the waxing moon.
I am only waiting for the clouds to touch, and close this interlude.
I am only waiting for the black dawn’s morning chorus.
And to think, I told myself I would never write about motherhood. As if ink does anything but soak the grain of the wood it spills on.
WRITING PROMPT
Go outside and write your name in the earth. Use a stick, use your finger. Pour some milk in the grooves when you are done.