Birth & What Came After Quotes

“I respond to many names.
Sometimes I am different people.
Sometimes I am the me that howls in
the night.
Sometimes I am the sickening silence.
I wear moonlight in my hair and bare
my teeth.”
― Jessica Bates, Birth & What Came After: poems on motherhood

“One day his fingers will grow knobby, he will start to sag. I pray to the goddesses, the gods, the eggs, the clouds, the trees. I pray to the wind that he will grow old and die well.”
― Jessica Bates, Birth & What Came After: poems on motherhood

“I try to feel my own edges in the
low light. I send my mind to the
outer edges of me — where do I end?
I send myself to my innermost edges,
and I see that in both directions 
I am infinite.”
― Jessica Bates, Birth & What Came After: poems on motherhood