This week’s Dispatches from New Motherhood treat is an extraordinarily visceral and affecting poem by Sarah Louise Simmonds-Tan. In YESTERDAY (OR WAS IT TODAY) Sarah Louise gives a vivid account of a section of a day and night, and it crackles with energy.
Sarah Louise says ‘What struck me about early motherhood, was the way that colours, light, taste and smell became heightened, somehow more tangible as if everything was shocking for the first time. Yet strangely, because you are also in this tiny prism of relentless exhaustion and love, the world also shrinks, just as it expands through your baby’s new world. The poem tries to explore this duality and strange and wonderful contradiction.’
Enjoy Sarah Louise’s remarkable poem here.
***
Yesterday (or was it Today)
Sarah Louise Simmonds-Tan
Yesterday (or was it today),
I pick snot and play,
Lynching a dinosaur on old satin ribbon,
Swinging frantically,
Thrashing green claws.
I text, staccato finger beats,
Matched with kisses,
Given while making milk.
I stretch, yawn,
Write emails:
‘I’m sorry this is late’.
‘I’m so sorry I haven’t called’.
I scrape mud off stairs,
Chunks of playful park,
Some of it still wet.
We squeeze it together,
In a rice cooker,
And mix in oats.
You cackle, a baby harridan,
And bite your tangerine.
The segment is so orange,
Mushing on your soft little chin.
You lick my face.
I lick you back.
I drink tea, it’s delicious.
You poo and wiggle,
There is shit
Everywhere.
I think it’s on the sofa,
But I don’t really want to look.
It’s raining for your next walk.
You think it’s funny.
I do not.
I listen to the radio,
And talk to my mum,
Who is lost, panicked, in Tesco.
A woman going past says,
‘I thought you were talking to your baby,
But you’re on your phone, how sad.’
Fuck you, lady.
We go to Tesco too,
You are very cross.
I put you on the conveyor belt,
Because I think
You’ll think it’s funny.
You don’t.
I feed you blueberries.
You like this more.
I tickle you and
Bubblegum babbling hits the cold air.
I picture you a robin,
Round and puff-chested.
And later, bathing, we chirp together.
I imagine you now at the beach.
You have never been.
It is summer, and you plunge in green water,
A salty little soldier of the deep.
I drink tea, it’s delicious.
At 1am, I wipe period blood,
So pretty as it makes heart shapes,
On white Formica.
You wake.
I put your mouth warm to me,
Little soft wet gulps.
It is quiet here,
In this winter’s night.
Today (or was it yesterday),
Some brilliant man
On the radio,
Said (while talking of poetry)
Something brilliant
About electricity.
And this is how it feels:
Like a crackle of electrostatic
Exploding new shapes.
Witching my mind
Into technicolour.
While my shattered body lies under blankets,
You on me.
***
Yesterday (or was it Today) by Sarah Louise Simmonds-Tan appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.