Flying Saucers
So many strange things said in those weeks,
the well-meant, the wild, the thoughtless critiques.
Like the gasp at six weeks: “Are you pregnant again?”
No, my friend, just human, and soft where I’ve been.
My body had become public somehow:
discussed, assessed, compared to before,
as though motherhood were a temporary weather
expected to clear from the shore.
But nothing, nothing, could ever compare
to the moment she paused, mid-coo, mid-stare,
and with utter delight, as if spotting a sign,
declared, “Your nipples! They look divine!
Like flying saucers!”
She said it with wonder, eyes all aglow,
and I nearly choked on my lukewarm cocoa.
A cosmic commendation, sincere and absurd;
the strangest yet kindest praise I’d heard.
Because they had changed.
They no longer belonged to beauty alone,
but hunger and comfort and keeping alive.
Small pink planets around which another life
had learned to orbit and thrive.
So let it be known, in this postnatal strife,
I’ve fed a small universe into life.
And if aliens land, they’ll know what is true:
even the galaxies bow to what mothers do.
Natalie Harveld