God, Like Me, a Mother

A poem.
An illustration of a mother sitting down in a bathroom breastfeeding her infant. She leans against a wall with green tiles on the bottom section and swirls of orange paint on the top third of the wall.
Illustration by Hannah Lock

What moved me the most was a tiny hand,
like the claw of a cub, pawing at my
rib cage in time to the suckle of his lips.
This beautiful, wild person sustained
by milk drawn from unknown wells within me.
I remember nursing once in the basement
restroom of the zoo’s primate house.
The floor tile was cold — no other place to sit.

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