Pink by Lou Harvey

It’s the middle of the night. Black outside. Dead beyond her screams.

Inside, the night lamp darkens blush-pink walls, giving enough light to see but not so much that our eyes have to adjust. I rock this roaring shrimp, pat her bottom, rustling nappy under cotton. I wonder when I’ll love her. When she was inside me, my ripening fruit, I did: she was my cherry, my apple, my pear, my orange, my grapefruit, my pineapple, my watermelon. Now she’s windfall, a raw and mysterious harvest I must protect from the wasps. Her lips quiver and stretch as my nipple brushes her face, tongue frantic beyond puce walls of outraged gum. Her screams make the silence beyond more present, and I feel its reproach, its urge not to be beaten back by her clenched fists. I am bitter with loneliness. Only I can meet her insatiable need, and she won’t let me provide.

I hold her head, force my areola into her mouth, flinch at the pinch of her latch. Her fists unfurl in forgiveness as she drinks; tiny prawn fingertips rest on my skin. I settle back in the chair’s plump cushions; I’m uncomfortable in my underwear with its bulky sanitary pad, and it rustles like a nappy as I shift to pull my dressing gown close around us, soft and pale. She gives a hiccupping sob as she pulls on me; my heart billows in our shared helplessness, my arm resting on the books piled beside me. Your Baby Week By Week. What To Expect The First Year. All I’ve learnt is that I long for us to be intact again, ripening together, nourished without the trauma of digestion. Outside me, her colours are loud and inconstant, always shifting with her mood; outside, our skins clash like duelling bells.

She takes long, greedy gulps punctuated by tiny vocalisations, a rhythmic pleasure. My womb contracts in pain like a shrinking fist and blood warms the cotton between my legs, my soaking lily pad. I bring her closer to me, reassuring her that she doesn’t need to pull so hard. I let my eyes close, lids coral in the low light, and sing to her. We’ll drink-a-drink-a-drink to Lily the Pink the Pink the Pink. The saviour of the human ra-ha-hace. The Saviour was the baby, not the mother. The mother was just the vessel. How does she go from being one to being two? How does the mother save herself?

My breast empties as she drains me into her, fierce and toothless. I lean back in my chair and pull her close again, letting her know she can release me, that she no longer needs all her power. My nipple disappears into her mouth, my skin straining with suction. I bring a finger to her lips to break her latch. She’s clamped tight. I press and push at my desperate breast to create a pocket of release around her mouth. My flesh draws away from me. Urgent, I bring more fingers to her lips. I peel, poke, start to panic at the power of her suction, her tongue lapping my fingers. My hand. My wrist. Her throat. My horror. My elbow disappearing into her. The appalling, comforting warmth of her mouth, the smoothness of her gullet as she swallows my arm. I pull but she’s strong, she’s purposeful and I’m clamped in her face, her eyes closed with the effort of ingestion. Her jaw distends to accommodate my shoulder; I’m rigid with fear, yet my arm curls expectantly inside her to make space for me. Now she laps up my neck and ear like an incoming tide, an ebb and flow of dread and hope. She works her lower lip against my jaw as she stretches, slowly, up and over my head, and I contract with terror and love as I understand she’s opening to me, for me, helping me to give myself to her, helping us be one again. We’ll drink-a-drink-a-drink to Lily the Pink the Pink the Pink.

She drinks me slowly, head first, a slick pulse down her throat like the clench and yield of her fists, a hard pink massage. My body outside her feels cold, left behind, and I try to think myself forward, further into her to make more space for me. I feel her mouth gape wider to accommodate my other shoulder. Soft organs slide aside for me; as I enter her thoracic cavity the light comes in, pale red veins threaded through translucent flesh and I know it’s enough, that nothing more need ever enter or come out of me. Her gums tug at my waist and I fear she can’t hold me, can’t reciprocate my own endless accommodations, but she keeps going, taking us back to wholeness. She stretches around my pelvis; I panic don’t eat my sanitary towel it’s not sterile and laugh at my pointless admonishment, my redundant care as her suction forces my thighs together, sealing me into her. My knees pass through her throat and my head grazes her pelvic bones. They open up to me, offering me a resting place, and I melt with grief at my yearning for her. I kick my feet; they hit the table and topple the baby books to the floor, The Nursing Mother’s Companion, The New Baby Survival Guide and then I’m powerless, my ankles flexed like a ballerina’s along her length. The bones of my feet knit pleasurably together as she swallows the last morsel of me; my head engages in her pelvis as our bones roll into each other, finding their grooves. Her love and hunger crown me; her pulsing tongue anoints my desire, my appalling ecstasy, as her mouth closes around the light.

I lie still, blood-warm. Her body squirms and shudders, making terms with me in tiny gurgles. A slow tide rolls up my length, a low tickle gathering depth and speed, which erupts through her throat and mouth in a rich, rippling burp. Then she’s calm; her body settles around me, loosening, giving me room. Her hand rests on her belly, a purple shadow through our melding layers of skin, and I can see the glow of the nightlight beyond, a rosy haze. Her breathing is slow as we ruminate on our fullness, our completion, our pure, pure love. We are reunified, once more the same shade. I no longer hear the colours; only our heartbeat.

In the Hours Immediately After by Catherine Sleeman