Nectar

O, thou beautiful damsel, may the four oceans
Of the earth contribute the secretion of milk
In thy breasts for the purpose for improving
The bodily strength of the child
O, thou with the beautiful face, may the child
Reared on your milk, attain a long life, like
The gods made immortal with drinks of nectar

– Sushruta (Hindu scripture), translated

They sit in the midst of seventh heaven as Hippostrate’s good nurses, as they carry mother dew of joy from Nature’s holy bosom straight into their perfectly rounded breasts. Boundless nature gushes in their crystal-white fluids, sustaining the tiny life-forces they have borne. Little candy-coated miracles are stirred to life, with the sweetest ache of waking up. They awaken their sleepy eyes to the softest music, the eternal ebb and flow of life, the rhapsody of creation. The mother offers the nectar; the child clings to it with zest. Nature weaves a world for both, with golden tapestries of a mother’s secretly cherished dreams, with softly knit beds of tender care.

The feeding proceeds, an exquisite verse of nature, together with the mother’s kisses, heightening their rhythm in climactic unison. Ahead lay a glimmering path for both fused in gold. The child lies upon a soiree of blossoms of the mother’s breasts, hearing the sound of an angel’s wings. Together, with their rolling rhythm of life, love speaks. Love speaks through continued oneness, with a soft head nestled in the mother’s arm. Love speaks through the liquid warmth of an ingenious, nutritious gift. Love speaks, “as the babe is fed with milk and praise”, as the newborn seeks “the breast of darkness”, to be “suckled by the night.”

There sits the mother, nestling her new life. The mother who has tread the darkest streets, the mother with crimson blood from her cracked lips, the mother who has fought the most vicious fangs in shadowed rooms, the mother who has wept despaired tears in the darkest steely nights of the city nestles the little face in those fond breasts, and watches, as darkness begins to fade away. The babe suckles, till the waking edge of his sunrise skin. Both cling to a moment of eternity before falling to earth. It is a breakfast in Wonderland, where hope and love runs silky slim. Through a dusty doorway, glaring lights–brutal and blinding, will soon sneak in. Hush, little one, rest a while on thy mother’s breasts.

I sat on the edge of a frozen delirium, in my arms a small warm scrap, a tender shoot, poking a fragile head up from unseen depths, to bloom. Emerging from the dark corners of my womb, she made me drown in her cherubic light. You need my touch, my taste, my stare. Gently I press my breasts against the softly curled corners of your lips. Evanescently, I surrender life of my own. Here I give you my miracle fluid, my heart’s immortal wine. For nine months I cradle you inside of me and wonder how you cuddle close and I gently nurse thee.

Here I give you my despaired blood and salty pain. I sit with you, naked and numb, watching my breasts change to steel, the steel of empty caresses. You have tried hard to suckle. You have suckled it all—the throb behind my breasts, the swelling, the bruises, the bone-deep pain of hot flashes, the cocoon of pain that had become caustic to the veins, the milk that dried in the nipples, dead and buried in the frozen earth of my bosom. Your hunger has broken silence into a million pieces, killing me softly with the touch of your craving lips.

Years will go by. Together, my child and I will struggle to find our paths, our places in the eternal circle of women. Within my heaving breasts, my frozen tears will open their locks and cold gates. Beyond them will die early memories of an infant, craving to weave a world with the milk of human kindness. Under the darkness and bleeding moon, under ashen stars, beneath a thousand splendid suns, underneath charred gates and utter apocalypse, mothers milk their babes to perfection. On the brink of life, in the edge of a long sleep, I wait for our bosoms to grow and heave. My bosom, which had frozen with my scars in the hope of some milk, will give life to yours; as you will nestle your cherub in your soiree of blossoms. Our bosoms will lace up boundaries, growing ever closer; connecting the seas and sands, fusing our souls to the Everlands.

Lopa Banerjee is originally from Kolkata, India. She is currently a graduate student of Creative Nonfiction Writing as well as a freelance writer and a writing consultant in Omaha, NE. She lives in Omaha with her husband, an IT professional, and their two daughters, Srobona and Sharanya.