Dear Postpartum

Dear Postpartum,

Who are you?

A season?

A category?

Are you a collection of symptoms?

Or are you something older?

Do you visit the bird mothers?

When the nest is suddenly full of open mouths,

Do you sit beside them too?

Do you follow the fox back to her den?

Do you ride on the back of the opossum mother?

Does she lie awake wondering if she is enough?

Does she mourn the creature she was before?

Or is that only us?

Did we give you a name because we were lonely,

Because we thought we were the only mothers who had crossed this river?

When the deer licks her newborn clean,

When the whale lifts her calf to breathe air,

When the opossum carries eight small lives into the night,

Do they know you too?

Alexis Rodriguez
Written Dec. 13 2025