Funky Cheese Fluff - a poem about newborn babies

FUNKY CHEESE FLUFF
by Niecey Docherty


Your face is adorned with newborn acne
alongside lines caused by unclipped fingernails and uncoordinated hands

Those eyes too large for your face and too wise for your newness
lose focus and cross in the middle, like plastic googly eyes

A button sits where a nose should be,
above pouty lips which contort into various poses when you sleep

Leaning close to your skin, I inhale you
I find your fragrance intoxicating - or maybe the buzz is just due to the fermentation of milk and spit up stored in the folds of your neck

I relish my daily task of picking out fuzz from between your toes and prying open your tightly closed fists to dig out strings of fluff with an odor not unlike cultured cheese

There’s a stench of decay from your navel, which I have affectionately named The Zombie Appocalypse
It earned you the nickname, “Smelly Belly”


Quite undignified, you pull awkward facial expressions and begin to grunt your desire for nourishment

So I come to your rescue with a breast full of milk and as you partake I savor the sweet sounds of your sloppy gulping
You indicate your satiation with an enormous belch which seems impossibly loud for a tiny tot such as you are

Nature calls to you and you are compelled to pull up your knees and growl with effort as you thunderously deliver something atrocious to your diaper



Then the hiccups launch themselves upon you
Helpless you suffer as they seize control over your wee body

Gentle convulsions and adorable squeaks, at an impressive rate of about fifty per minute
They exhaust you, which you express in a yawn so wide you could swallow the room whole

Until that yawn is rudely interrupted by a violent sneeze which leaves you staring at the ceiling, pondering the cruelty of this world outside the womb

There’s nothing so perfect or so beautiful as being so utterly depended on, so wholly trusted
by someone so needy and incapable

This is pure beauty, utter loveliness, exquisite fine art

I need more than breath to never let you down

I wouldn’t change a single thing. 


Besides your diaper 
(and I’m thinking a bath wouldn’t hurt...)

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