Past Nest by Anna Fernandes

Past Nest

and on the streets and in stores and in cafés

I cram pregnant bellies into my eyes

and in my mouth I crunch their sugar shells

like mini-eggs, lick

the creamy curve of moon scoop

waxing through all its phases

on these other bodies

stretching sundress fabric taut.

I’ve done it too I want to say and nod-

I held fullness in my pelvis like that!

I smile knowingly, simper and leer,

my no-longer-infant child pressed close

under my wing.

I slaver after them as they steer

their great hulls away from me,

 throw myself down in their foamy wake

-a gull gulping at air

and in our garden my lonely child

pecks about

scratching dirt up into her nail beds

there in the potato planter finds a bird-

nest flimsy under flap of polyethylene.

Cradled in a fist punched hole

of shredded-wheat hair and spit,

holy in old spilling soil, sit

two eggs cracked empty, three chilly speckled

blue with waiting,

a cuckoo-potato greening.

Mama is a callous absence

we peek and peek and have to still believe

she will come

back to warm the others alive.

I think about holding one on my tongue

- a sugared almond

Anna Fernandes lives near Bristol and writes about living and mothering through grief and chronic illness. She has recently had poems published in Ink and Marrow, Canary Collective and Ink Sweat & Tears. She was shortlisted for the Laurie Lee Prize for Writing 2024.