L’Oeuf Chaud Froid

By Julia C. Alter

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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I’ve said I remember nothing 
of the first three months. 
But when I start peeling back 
the bleary out-of-body shroud, 
the stitches, the sitz baths, 
there’s the milk-
stained blue couch 
where I woke in the blue
light, turning off 
my alarm, turning on 
the yellow pump
and the TV, every three hours 
another automatic emptying. 
An ounce or two, less than half 
of what you needed, the box 
of formula unopened 
in the pantry. The refusal 
to open, scoop, measure. 

Watching the famous California chef 
pipe Meyer lemon crème fraîche 
into an empty egg shell with the  
razor-cut cap, nothing 
had ever been 
so luxuriously precise.

And I remember 
taking scissors 
to my head 
the next morning, wet 
hair punctuating 
the floor. Reading it 
like tea leaves,
no room for pretty here.

Milk extracted 
from my tits
like lemon juice 
in the eye, 
like a man 
fighting 
the urge to cry. 
Thin cord of milk 
pulled reluctantly 
from the new abyss 
where your body used 
to be,

haphazard 
grotesque, 

a rough white rope 
up through 
my 

breast is best

No, I’ll never forget 
the sucking 
that yellow machine did
when you couldn’t. 
How I would 
grind my teeth 
like I was coming down 
off ecstasy 
when the only thing left 
is the chills, 
the useless hollows 
of a body
shitting and shivering, 
the threat 
of the flesh 
coming back, 
feverish and frigid

fragile 

as 4 AM           as baby           an egg shell		

opened up 

and ready
to be filled

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Julia C. Alter received her MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in numerous print and online journals. Recent poems can be found in the Santa Clara Review, Voicemail Poems, Fugue, and Stained: An Anthology of Writing About Menstruation. She lives in Vermont with her son. 

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