Suffer
Clare Pollard

Your negative thoughts might harm the foetus
and you might abort the foetus or think about aborting the foetus
or just not be maternal
and you got pissed at that wedding and cava can harm the foetus.

You might inhale or eat a soft-boiled egg or brim a boiling bath or have more than one point five cups of coffee.

You might wake to find you slept on your back or your right (or is it left?) side.

You might slip or run or lift or weed or dye your hair or use most household products.

You might forget your folic acid
and you’re overweight or underweight or thirty eight
and that elderflower pressé you just treated yourself to at the bar can cause gestational diabetes
and you didn’t have the Down's test or had the test
and you’ve not joined yoga or hypnobirthing
and stress can harm the foetus.

You might not have bought a birthing ball.

You might opt for an epidural.

You might squeal for the fucking drugs or they might have to cut you open.

You might have no milk or sour milk or mastitis
or loathe the way your nipples fizz; how they squirt
like a clown’s flower-brooch.

You might look at her and feel underwhelmed.

You might drop her or break that delicate neck or that terrible vulnerable pit in the back of her skull.

You might overheat or swaddle or bring her in your bed or fall asleep whilst feeding.

You might let your hand lose contact with the baby in the bath
or leave the pram a moment
or leave her in the car seat or not strap her in the car seat properly.

You might own an envious cat.

You might leave a window open or a door or let her play outside unsupervised like paedo-bait or fox-bait as the tabloids will imply.

You might have blinds and sockets and stairs
and a pond or know someone with a pond.

Also you might let her watch too much CBeebies or have a dummy or cheap shoes or food with too much salt or MMR or pink plastic princess crap or be spoiled.

You might make inappropriate comments about her weight.

You might give her your nose.

You might give her poor hand-eye coordination or a flaw in the chambers of her heart.

Also letting her ‘cry it out’ can damage her brain
and you have a routine or no routine
and are probably yummy or slummy –
silting up cafes with your Bugaboo and NCT buddies
overthinking latching
or abandoning her to zitty sitters
so you can get drunk and be clumsy or lurid or not there.

You might be cold and hard like all those bags of expressed milk that tumble out and hurt your feet each time you open the freezer.

You might be too much, too smothery: eating her toes and pressing moist desperate kisses on her tiny struggling head all ga-ga-goo-goo-mummy-stinks-an-ickle-bit-of-milkypoo as you sink into the sicky sofa; the bad-meat leak still slop-bucketing your knickers (you’re so torn it hurts to fart even).

You might not have washed-up or opened the curtains and you’re watching Loose Women you’re so pathetic, pathetic!

You might have sex within her earshot and she’ll think you’re being stabbed
and be traumatised or jealous or Electra
or her daddy will divorce you or dick around
because you slacked off from perineal massage or pelvic floor exercises
and you’ve lost your libido
and he saw the business end.
Also you might have a career.  

You’ll be in a meeting when she says her first word
which will be ‘mama’ to the nanny
or you might be unable to afford a nanny
or she won’t take the bottle or they won’t let you go part-time or will make you redundant
and you’ll throw yourself into bake-offs making cupcakes so sophisticated they express your inner death
and did you forget to sign onto that nursery waiting list two years before she was born?
And you say you haven’t been to Little Movers?

The health visitor might say she isn’t gaining weight:
her pencil point wounding the chart in the wrong place.

She might call in social services.

They might find out you’re alone or on benefits or medication or have damp and take your baby.

You might deserve it.

You might smack her or beat her or stub fags out on her succulent little thighs
or lock her under stairs or chain her to a bed
or let her sit in her own shit all day.

You might sell her or pimp her or mutilate her genitals
or expose her on a mountainside
or leave her with an ‘uncle’ or a priest
or touch her or not touch her
or take photos.

Also you might watch her starve because you brought her into a world with finite resources and an unsustainable rate of population growth.

You might watch a fly dance on her eye.

You might let a celebrity adopt her.

You might watch her die of a treatable disease.

You might watch her die of an untreatable disease in a kids’ ward with murals of Dumbo or In the Night Garden.

You might live in a warzone and be unable to protect her.

You might not live in a good catchment area.

You might live in a poor catchment area and be unwilling to run a church tombola to protect her.

You might not be able to stop climate change.

You might not be able to offer her hope.

You might smother her then gas yourself or hold her and jump off a cliff or use that knife, that knife, the one you looked at too long in the kitchen this morning even though it goes without saying you don’t want to never could.

You might lie awake at 3am listening for her breath
or not love her enough or love her so much it’s a sickness, it’s sick.

You might go mad.

Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978 and currently lives in London. Her first collection of poetry, The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe, 1998) was written whilst she was still at school, and received an Eric Gregory Award. It was followed by Bedtime (Bloodaxe, 2002) and Look, Clare! Look! (Bloodaxe, 2005), which was made a set text on the WJEC A-level syllabus. A CD of Clare reading her work is available from The Poetry Archive. Her fourth collection Changeling, was published in June 2011, and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In 2003 she won a Society of Authors travel award and an Arts Council writer’s award. 

This poem is from Neu! Reekie! #UntitledOne (Polygon, 2015), edited by Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson: http://www.birlinn.co.uk/Neu-Reekie-untitled-one.html 

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