desert

A tiny thing crawling through the desert, parched, glimpsing an oasis. The force of her mouth on the breast like a vacuum hose on those shrink wrap storage containers that pull all the air out of your winter sweaters until they are balls of tired fleece. Breasts of tired fleece. Inflatable, though. Every few hours rising above the horizon, and her tired, despairing gaze, lifted from the hot sand fixates on them and she calls her brazen, curdling life-and-death wail.

I pull her to the breast and she begins to drink. Everything else fades. It is okay, I tell her. And it is.