Milk, The Cauldron Anthology

Originally published in the "Mother" edition of The Cauldron Anthology, February 2022, p.54
Pea Flower Tomioka

Milk

She is exhausted.

Her body is weak
and movement causes the incision across the belly
a vessel of her greatest treasure, to singe in pain.

Her breasts ache.
Her nipples crack.
She is in anguish, caught between the struggles

to produce enough to feed her son a morning bottle, and the
devastation she fears if she
fails to fill the bottle.

Tomioka, Pea Flower.  "Milk" Mother, The Cauldron Anthology, February 2022.
http://cauldronanthology.weebly.com/blog/issue-14-mother