Four girls pool their breasts together for a total of eight.
[LAUGHTER]
To avoid awkwardness, stares and uselessness,
they're quick to round up some babies.
The babies know how to get a good latch,
but the girls, who are new at this,
have trouble getting their elbows out of the way.
They worry about explaining their bruised faces at work
the next day.
Group breastfeeding accident?
[LAUGHTER]
Truth isn't a stranger.
Girl B's mother comes along and drapes a soft, gauzy blanket
over the whole pile of girls and babies
but the motive is not modesty.
The heads of the babies cover up enough
of the breasts for enough of the time.
Rather, the intention of the mother
is to shield them all from the impending storm, while still
allowing for air circulation.
That kind of mother gauze.
The breast feeding babies while nursing
breathe through their nostrils.
Without this ability, said baby would be forced
to choose breathe or nurse.
The two cannot be done concurrently.
Over the decades, the collective, heavy and steady
nose breathing of the babies slowly wears down
the gauzy blanket.
One baby mindlessly fingers a hole
in the gauze while continuing to suckle milk
from girl A. One baby is face fucking the breast of a highly
influential art curator, but has neither the language
nor the awareness so as to make it count.
One baby is distracted by the sound of another baby fondling
the gauze and breaks away from the spell of the breast,
catches a glimpse of the moon shimmering
through a hole in the gauze.
One baby is crushed by the weight of another baby.
This in itself is not really the problem.
It is just that under the pressure
of the weight of the other baby, she
can feel her own center of gravity
sliding away, threatening to elongate or separate
her body away from her head, her mouth, her lips clamped
around the tired breast of girl H.
Her body stretches out.
The nipple of girl H stretches out.
Something has to give, and it will.
But sometimes, this takes years maybe, 9 or 10 or more.