Weaning is a Transitive Verb By Kaitlin Solimine I’m feeding something from the inside while outside me, the toddler can’t sleep without his mouth on my nipple. The older child, five years old, who can multiply numbers and speak two languages, asks me to put a diaper on her and begs for milk from my breasts before bed. Body is body is body holding body growing body and I don’t know where I am in this. The beginning is obvious: a crawl up stomach to breast, newborn slick with vernix peck-pecking at chest, mouth agape and missing, missing, now finding the nipple. Ahhh, I say the first time. How the sucking is a relief. But when will it end? I read about elaborate weaning rituals, like in Genesis 21:8: “And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.” I wonder: when will the last day be? What meal will we eat? Whales nurse from inverted nipples nurslings nudge loose from mammary slits; some nurse as long as three years, their young trailing the ocean’s currents, attached like a child to hip, nipple in pursed lips. Kangaroos live their earliest months close to the breast, a pouch literally grown from the body to ensure the nursling stays close, gives the mother two free hands to forage, to fight. Nipple slips from mouth, casual as late night sin but even in the dark the toddler gropes, little tongue a singe, little tongue a hummingbird, little hands that squeeze, milkmaid to teat. “Enough!” I say, because
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