Her Baby With Colic

by Mary Lou Sanelli

Sitting cross-legged on a receiving blanket
spread over grass on the first sunny day in a month
in this coastal town where winters are long
and summers unreliable at best,
she seemed a stranger-hardly the woman I knew,
face pale as beach sand. Smile
sarcastic as if she withheld some secret
that could destroy me.

Eager, I wanted details of delivery.The whole of it.
How her body felt its way through the pain.
But she wouldn't talk about that. Instead
she told me what it was like to cook
using one hand and to sleep
and breastfeed at the same time.
And how tired she was. How tired.

I wanted to say the right thing.
Something new-agey
like someone might add at a spiritual gathering or write
in a self-help book, but nothing came to me.
I looked around. Diapers hanging on a rack
cast shadows. In silence
I took to counting how many times one widened
to blend with the next.

When the baby woke
with so much sound I remember thinking
from such a tiny opening, I reached out to hold her
and we sat like that for a moment
as if I knew how to quiet her
without ever having done so before.
But blood-red-faced, she grew louder
bathing us in screams and landing me
smack in the middle of her distress. Taking me
with her way down
to the place of colic-the place
I now see reflected in the slap
of her mother's stare.

Mary Lou Sanelli's poems have appeared in many literary publications. Her newest collection, Close At Hand, is forthcoming from High Plains

Source: Women Wise, Summer 19997