By Katie Kapugi
She remembers the feel of her tiny son’s mouth
sucking and tugging at her cracked flesh.
While he nursed he scratched with tiny nails.
Squeezing her breasts
her husband whispers, how nice it is finally
to be alone. All night with sandpaper hands, he
has been pressing against her, twisting her body
in the sheets.
Outside she thinks she hears a baby crying,
and milk begins to cascade from her nipples
to her stretch-marked navel. He is snoring.
His nose hair
pokes out beyond his nostril. Wincing from pain,
she stumbles to the bathroom to express her milk
into the toilet. Behind the thin wall a bed creaks.
J’ai perdu ma vie.
Outside their 1976 Peugeot waits,
a relic of her past life, to take them home.
She steps outside and leans against its teal hood.
He still sleeps
unmoving on the bed, his once lean body a
soft mass of hair and skin. Their babysitter waits,
but she can’t bring herself to wake him yet.
The smooth metal
of the car is cold on her cheek. The lifeless body
of the car asks nothing from her. She smiles finally
against its empty touch.