From the miracle of motherhood

From the miracle of motherhood, an ode to Del Kathryn Barton

Night-time in the nursery is not the place of soft quiet I imagined it would be. It is a surreal place where countless reflective, glitter-inflected eyes watch as you fall in and out of another human being’s first reported experiences of the subconscious realm.

In these time-resistant hours, I recognise myself too keenly in Del Kathryn Barton’s pale, long-limbed figures, witnessing the translucency of my own mind and body rendered nearly borderless, worn thin and mutable through the forces of expectations and sleep deprivation.

When my daughter was in utero, I was an impervious, unrelenting galaxy for this firstborn wonder of mine, but now I see myself reduced from that tranquil impartiality into a worldly creature: a shamanistic figure, powerful and terrible, multi-eyed and sharp-toothed as any of Barton’s creations, as I try to insist on a path back from nonsensical night terrors to the world displayed in picture books around the room.