The midwife starts to pull at the placenta
as if it’s a stubborn weed.
In the before-time, I’d ticked the box
that said unaided, that said physiological,
but now I just want it out of me,
all of it, take it out, I’ve had enough,
and so she sets to and the bed
is drenched in blood.
Now the midwife is busy stitching,
just a few, she soothes, a few small stitches.
I didn’t think I could ever stand
to be repaired, but I hardly feel a thing.
When the baby was poised between
two worlds, the midwife told me
to reach down and touch the bright-dark
feathers of her hair. A second midwife
bustles in and starts to squeeze my nipple.
Neither sewing or feeding can wait
in this new world. She tells me the baby
will never latch, that there’s something
wrong with me. One midwife with a needle,
the other collecting creamy drops of colostrum
in a pipette, and yes, it’s as awful as it sounds,
but at the time, I didn’t mind. I was hovering
in a corner of the room, looking down
at my body, and the hands of the midwives,
busy at their work. What a time to find out
I can leave the body behind, that my body
was not a cage, just a place I rested for a while.
Kim Moore’s latest collection “All the Men I Never Married” won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection
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This article appears in the 05 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The New Gods of AI