Colostrum

For four days, the baby's parched lips
worked my stinging skin. Pressed up beside me,
he suckled away our sleep
with his thirst. Those hospital nights
filled with the shrugs of nurses,
and ragged dreams of barren riverbeds, receding tides
and always the child in my arms,
shrinking slowly, a small sack of wailing.
The end of the fourth day,
my breasts suddenly transformed
into throbbing stones, yet still no milk.
In the shower, heat pelted away at the ache
while I willed hardness to melt.
Then they came, those rich yellow drops
my body had made and could finally offer,
the first sprinkle of rain on hungry soil,
and I watched my child with the eyes of all mothers
through fierce histories of loving and fear—
war-time queues, futile miles to a muddy well,
dirt sifted and sifted again
to find the stray kernels of corn
to pound into flour for the family's
single precious meal of the day.