Rising tears meet
your cry which splits
my weighted sleep of exhaustion;
breasts bend and burn
with the work of nursing you.
An unbearable but born
frustration, seeming no
more than
your milky manna,
cohabits alongside an addictive
sweetness of smell
of skin and hair and softness.
In your yearning
lips and tentacle mouth,
we spend hours joined
yet are never one—
my nursling. You
devour me
in a feast of lust and satiety.
I would be free and
eaten unendingly.
Bettina Tate Pedersen is Professor of Literature at Point Loma Nazarene University. She has published articles on women writers, feminism, and pedagogy. She has co-edited, with Allyson Jule, Being Feminist, Being Christian: Essays from Academia (Palgrave, 2006; 2008) and Facing Challenges: Feminism in Christian Higher Education and Other Places (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015).