How would you describe the scent
if a newborn baby?
Salt and blood,
the woman-slick just begun to dry?
What words for all the smells
that rise from deep in the small
caverns of her body?
Is it days or weeks until
she’s milk and powder,
soap and wipes to clean away the slick
that comes from inside her now,
coiled worm of bowels?
Briefly she’ll smell of dryer sheets
with names like natural and fresh pine.
Other times it must be
formula dribbled and dried.
Now she is all face,
smooth or scrunched
on an odorless screen.
When finally I can breathe her in
will that make her any more mine?