​
Grandmother's Milk    

​
On my son's twenty-second birthday
we recall his birth,
how he nursed for twenty minutes,
and my engorged breasts.

My father tilts back in his chair. 
Between spoonfuls of ice cream and cake
he speaks of his mother
whose breasts hardened with unused milk
when his baby sister couldn't take enough.

She asked each son
to suck out the pain.

I can see it plain as day,
my father says, closing his eyes.
I was ten years old.
We were on the back porch.
My younger brother wouldn't do it,
so I did, 
I sucked out that milk.

Spit it in the dirt, my mother said.
Next day she went into town 
and got a hand pump,
so she didn't need me.

Tonight, driving by a graveyard,
my headlights sweeping tombstones,
I think again of that ten-year-old
and mouthfuls of unswallowed milk
settling into the dust.