by Allison Mei-Li
I limped around the house,
bruised and milk-stained,
while my mother whisked
around the kitchen, steeping
teas of ginger and cinnamon,
hibiscus, dark as blood—
her tonic to heal my body.
When I wasn’t marveling
at the rise and fall of the baby’s chest,
I was worrying myself into a winter.
Every sunset brought a bouquet
of dread. Every dinner plate
was a thing to cry into.
I was always hungry for air,
rushing outside, palms open,
trying to catch my breath.
The baby blues, they all said,
but nothing felt pastel.
I’d fallen into the deep end,
dark and murky as ash,
like the time I got lost
in the current at Black Rock.
And again, it was my mother
who pulled me ashore.
She was the only one who could reach me.
She knew what the rest didn’t—
that my baby
was not the only one
who had just been born.
Allison Mei-Li lives in Southern California, where she is a mother, writer, and speech-language pathologist. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, MER Literary, Coffee and Crumbs, Ink + Marrow, VC Reporter, Wildscape, and elsewhere. Allison is a poetry reader at The Turning Leaf Journal and shares her writing on Instagram @writtenbyallison and at allisonwrites.substack.com.