New Mother - Sharon Olds Poem

A week after our child was born,
you cornered me in the spare room
and we sank down on the bed
You kissed me and kissed me, my milk undid its
burning slip-knot through my nipples,
soaking my shirt. All week I had smelled of milk, fresh milk, sour. I began to throb my sex had been torn easily as cloth by the crown of her head, I'd been cut with a knife and sewn,
the stitches pulling at my skin - and the first time you're broken, you don't know you'll be healed again, better than before.
I lay in fear and blood and milk
while you kissed and kissed me, your lips hot and swollen
as a teen-age boy's your sex dry and big,
all of you so tender, you hung over me,
over the nest of the stitches, over the splitting and tearing,
with the patience of someone who
finds a wounded animal in the woods
and stays with it, not leaving its side
until it is whole, until it can run again.

I first read this poem 5 years ago and it gave me a great insight into motherhood that is not often discussed. I especially loved the the patience of waiting until wholeness arrives.