‘Safe Period’ by Breda Spaight

After her third child, X marks the forbidden
days, and my mother sleeps in my bed, sour
in her heat,
summer Sunday odour of seaside, odd nights
when she’s suddenly
beside me, gasping, hiding underwear
beneath the pillow after
wiping herself, rosaries murmuring
through damp fingers
in birdsong dawn, prayer and seed coursing
to her very womb, the Our Father,
Hail Mary mumbled to the inner
chant – I hope I’ve escaped,
this time.
Days when the house is a chorus
to her strain, doors bang, pots clatter:
she loathes her nature,
not sex, but holding him, his whispered
doubts pleasure to her heart, a fault
before Christ the redeemer, the child
a curse, mishaps buried
like pups in dung heaps.
They avoid each other
in the evenings, the Please and Thank you
of strangers, air crackling, the ferocity of
unspent sex worrying every cell, bodies
hunched over chairs, his voice leading
hers in the Rosary, all of us clustered,
as though the last people on a wreck,
the round haunches of them both,
the flesh of her
rippling like any animal that runs.

From issue #2: spring/summer 2016

About the Author
Breda Spaight is a writer from Co. Limerick. Her poetry has appeared in numerous Irish ezines and journals, including The SHOp, Burning Bush 2 and Crannóg. Her poetry has also appeared in US, Australian, UK, and other international journals. She was a guest reader at the Paris Book Fair in 2002.