Swans - Can't Find My Way Home
...
This stomach reminds me of many things; things that remained, and things that shouldn't remain anymore...
After Jack had been conceived to this world, a month or two weeks later, I had to do some exercises, since I had been lying flat all along. It was difficult on the first days, but being a member of Dragoon Knights motivated me enough to do them, until I could fully recover to my state prior to labor. Days prior I could walk once again, and prior to the exercising of my legs, the placenta I and Jack shared once had been taken from my womb to a bowl of soup, as I and the son born of my flesh stood on the same bed, one lying above the other.
From the first breath of tiny lungs, to the approach, the crucial contact of his skin to my heat, bleeding without any open wounds belonging to his own, and the string who had been cut, with its remains rotting day after day, as Jack felt the heat of my body, and I felt of same heat, feared of such to overcome me as a whole.
Exposed like abattoir meat, even with both of us sharing common pieces of cloth, green like the sourest of the limes, green like a tasteless wall of lime, although my tongue still had the ability to taste something, like my own flesh.
I had to taste the stew of my own placenta in a soup Bart prepared for me, to improve my recovery, or so he said. He also tasted the same meat, which he declared to be a bit lumpy, sometimes gummy, and I could agree with him as well. I may admit that I felt slightly better after I had tried out to eat my own flesh. Same relief that I found when I filled in the potty a few days later, or or when I took a bath, like now. Bart felt nothing else, other than a relief as soon as I told to him that I felt better, I got better, I got strong, and nothing wrong, because I felt better, as much as I couldn't taste a glass of wine, like Bart would usually do when followed by me, on the old days before I became older, yet even younger, I had, and still I do have, been able to brought another living being to this world, as much as I had been brought as well on same way.
Before I felt better, I didn't want that thing, who bore the name of 'Jack', given by the father, near my breasts, even if he needed such milk, who only I had been gathering a month ago. Painfully, my ears had to endure his tantrums, and when I couldn't, I had to redeem myself, and allow that mouth, who had gotten a surface of white like the strands of my hair, and a while like the milk I had to give to him.
Even at the moment of his birth, Jack seemed more quieter than when he 'asked' to me when it was time to feed him, and time for his didn't mattered; early in the morning, late in the midnight, Jack would be awake anytime he wanted, just to be feeded by me, his mother. Besides waking me up in the middle of my sleep, Jack used to bite my nipples with his jaw, as if, since that earlier, he was telling me, and anyone else, besides the cries, that my breasts had been claimed to his, and only, and he didn't even bothered if I ended up aching, or not.
I never told your father, or anyone else, about the 'sensation' I had when I brought Jack to the food he demanded for the first time. Not that I had the time to say it so, but I couldn't, since I preferred for it to be restricted between me, and only, but since you are between me, and since I shared many secrets with you as well, I may be able to tell you about that. A thing I thought to be forgotten for good, since it was wrong for I to had felt it, even if it was good, for a moment, before the shock, and the shame.
It happened on the first days, even after Jack had bitten me without a pair of teeth, and the same thing also happened when I stood with Bart, and only. Now, since only I and Jack shared of that bed on those days, I couldn't, and still I can't even call such thing felt from the tip of my nerves by 'pleasure', even if it had given me creeps, shivers not belonging to my spine, or any kind of bone belonging to my body, yet, I had the need to feel a kind of pleasure, but not on that way, who had left a guilt on me since I am able to record of those moments.
With half of my dignity though to be gone, I also had been lead astray, not only by the son who had been feeding on myself, but by his father, your father, the one who once gave me comfort; Jack and Bart may had shared of a way to brought me comfort in a way, yet they also had found a way to harm me as well.
The size of Jack's head, who weighed more than his own little body, had done a major damage to my entire body, who felt the loss of him, and the blood who passed through the navel to his. Although my vessels, compressed for a month to bear the size of the infant growing inside me, like now, had relaxed within the days after the labor, nowhere else, other than my organs, went on the same relaxing.
Being numb by the pain instead, if it was a challenge enough to be able to fill in the potty on the early days, or to raise a leg to practice one of the exercises required to each woman a few days after the birth, I also had to deal with a kind of love, unlike the one Bart gave me before, during the days we spent together, after I had completed the training sessions, during the nights he used to brought me home, and used to leave at the front door as well, before we ended up on same bed, same home, as I used to woke up before his, yet half of his always had been awake in the mornings, like this one.
However, when Jack came, Bart couldn't even touch me, or kiss my lips, afraid as much as I had been of bearing, more than a headache in the middle of the night. Sleeping in the sofa instead of sharing of that same bed, Bart avoided any kind of contact of himself, or anyone else, with me; not even a single touch of his hands were delivered on the first days, even if such had happened before, when the labor pains had taken me as a whole, unlike any kind of infection, fortunately.
Only the heat remained, not the heat brought by Bart, or the heat brought by a pile of blankets, covering not only me but Jack as well, whom Bart holded carefully, but the heat, belonging to nothing alike the blazes of a fire, that first took my forehead, then my ears, and my head as a whole, crossing through my skin, and almost ending up taking me and the entirety of me as well.
A sister of mine had died of the same fever as soon as her baby was born. It took five days, to be exact, for her heat to be gone, together with her soul. The baby cried, as it usually did, and had done on the day of his mother's demise.
Knock... Many gifts were brought by family members, and friends of mine to me, and Jack; same also happened to my sister, who had never seem then being used, or wore, by his daughter, whose only gifts, the ones who remained of those times, were her name, Nora, same name who belonged to our mother, and that orange ribbon, tied into her tail, a sort of tie that seems to be the only one who remained after her mother had passed
...Knock... Same could be said to this ribbon, and my mother as well, however, the red coat says otherwise, or used to say, yet it keeps saying the same. Even without a kiss, which he grated to my lips a month after, the same month I had decided to become, once again, a proud Dragoon Knight, Bart's tenderness with me stood the same, and the same could be related to Jack.
As I had been stuck in the same room, lying on the same bed, wearing the same clothes, watching the light coming from the same window, that was enough to make me mad, but I also had been living with the same Bart, and now with our son as well. Or, should I say, his son.
My son...Knock...The one who took care mostly of Jack was his father, instead of me. But in the early days, it was different. I also took care of Jack, in a way; by being a Dragoon Knight, I protected him, and many others like him, from the dangers that surround the world outside. I may protect you as well, with these claws. Yet, even with such protection, came the distance... Knock... Knock...
Away from the heat, away from the breast, away from the sheltering red sky; I know babies can't walk on the instant they open their eyes, because of the weight of their heads, compared to the weight of their bodies…
Knock Knock...Jack can't accept I am his mother, because of the weight left by this head, and those who had made it. However, not only they, but me as well. It was me who decided to be this way...Knock...It was this body who decided me to be this. These clothes I wear made me into this. And you there counts, although you do not wear any cloth, or do follow a way...
Yet.
...Knock Knock Knock...Jack grew up on this way, but he's still a child. Knock...There's still time to do it so...Knock...There's always a time to grow up, to accept, and to...Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock... Geez, who might be the rowdy standing at the door, knocking so much?