My words won’t flow

But my milk does.

It seeps through my clothes and pools with the sweat of these too-hot-days

I squeeze drops of antiseptic, anaesthetic magic onto my babe’s skin and watch tiny scratches disappear before she wakes

My brain won’t connect

But my heart does.

To the slow rhythm of rise, feed, play, sleep, repeat

To the call of rest and nourishment, laughter and stillness.

My wit won’t surface

But my Spirit does.

Maee Kali laughs while my synapses quiver and question

While my thoughts ruminate she quietly annihilates, what I no longer need.

My thoughts won’t align

But my essence does.

An ancient knowing, it calls me back from doom scrolls of genocide and yummy mummies

Back to my ancestors, the ones who knew how to answer the moon when she calls.

My spelling won’t spell

But my witch does.

She pulls up grammar by the roots and plunges her fingers into the earth where it grew

She rips the ableism from my mind and sains the space it leaves behind.

My words won’t come

But my grief does.

In great waves it blasts away days and weeks of the smallest of talk

It leaves honesty and pain, and a babe who can nearly walk.

— AJ