Solid Water
I wait for the want to come inside of me
while watching the morning commute near the Amstel.
A stork on a houseboat does the same
while hundreds of cyclists navigate narrow lanes.
She flies closer to me sitting on a Victorian lamppost
both modern and classical. The want is the glass pane
with lighting that will somehow change from gaslight to electric.
It’s an internal clock pulsing at my fingertips warning
these will be the last few years to experience that tenderness.
Dark petals fall from an evergreen shrub.
They swirl in circles far past the blossoming stage-
unhinged in the wind like something more matriarchal
I have yet to be introduced to. Most land on the Amstel
which I’ve learned recently means solid water.
This river is self-assured, sharing water with the
rest of the canals. It has the confidence to keep expanding,
flowing on autopilot. To think, for so long,
that’s how the world worked, after-all, fifty years ago
the average woman had five children. And now, for the first time
in modern history, the world’s population is set
to decrease by the end of the century. I look at the petals
in the river, the budding pistils going down stream leading nowhere.
Rewiring
My nail technician
asked if I had children
and I said no
We discovered we were
the same age
and it’s not an uncommon
question to ask
it just feels symbiotic to
the feeling of
sitting in traffic
I asked her if she did
and she shakes her head no
I said it’s hard to know when
if that’s your thing
and she looked
at me like I was
the car blocking
the traffic
she said it’s not up to me
it’s mere
biological programming
I look at her like the car
that was
pulverized
checking if everyone
is still alive despite
all the glass shards
shimmering on the road
obtuse art
things we pretend to know
driving
away quickly
into the clearing
Mastitis
She’ll say things like free the nipple
without a hint of comedic disposition
pulling out one breast, for the thing she loves
and sometimes hates (her words)
somewhere under a green and white striped umbrella
or a white cloth table setting, people get offended
she’s without as much as a smile to
offer while the milk pours out of her tiny body
when she’s pumping at the office I
hear the machine whir in the back room
her nipples expand, chaffed and irritated,
she’s typing on her laptop,
still answering questions in this private moment,
that is not hers, moonlighting as a mother
because it’s only been a few months
and she’ll share with the baby later on, these nutrients
or sometimes, she’ll
dump it when we go out for a glass of wine,
and she’ll tell me how her
breasts ache, so excuse me, I must use the
bathroom, and she’ll hover above a toilet seat,
and wait for the milk to come
DINK
When we simplify, the world simplifies
I had to ask her to say it again
this phrase I wasn’t aware of
(dual income no kids)
the mind results to shortcuts
“bird” is bird instead of mocking jay,
we all need reductions, categorisations,
a simplification: good woman, bad woman,
a different-part-of-society
When the world melts and I
want to be anything other than solid,
primary colors, I shut the curtains
I’m only pink praline
but it’s turned into a darker burgundy
I’m cascading into
When the world is blushing,
when my body is less tangled,
I share with the neighbors: this is
what my world looks like without children
Quieter, less sticky probably
I admire this about the city,
the neat little apartments I pass
How some care less about privacy-
inviting strangers to see
how they spend their Saturday
I watch a mother with a child on her lap
only for a second, explaining words then sounds
like animals, how we mimic them
(moo, ruff, rawr, cock-oh-doodle-doo)
Sara Schraufnagel is a poet from Minneapolis. Her work has appeared in Slipstream, New Plains Review, and The Fourth River, among others.