Coming to Term

2.22.2007

Coming to Term

I have become pregnant
With love for myself.
My body aches from the stretch of it.
Skin pulled taut
Thin enough to see the veins
To see my life flowing
Nourishing myself
Endlessly
Cyclically

Mother and child
I push against my own womb
and kick.
Reach my hand to my belly and laugh
Smiling, say, “Do you want to feel her moving?”

My breasts are tender
They overflow with
Poetry
Exuberance
With spontaneous dancing.
My stomach is my ballast and it forms my waltz,
It pulls me up and down with the heft, the rhythm of it.
My movement becomes weighty
Gravity my drum beat.

There is grief here
This birth, this life
Has risen from death.
The deaths of hundreds of menstruations
Cleansing
Cleansing assault and sacrilege
Family and rape
The blood has flowed thickly
Clotting
I was scared I would die there
Sitting on the toilet
Feeling life, death drip out of me.

I have become pregnant with
Love for myself.
I needed no man for conception
Immaculate
My love is spawned up from inside me
Egg and sperm
I embrace myself
With fertilization

My eyes are a dazzling blue
The fullness of my womb
Sharpens my colors
My hair shines with the oil of it
Vibrancy seeps from my pores

You do not need to hold me
I hold myself
Wrap my arms around my belly
Gently draw myself near in embrace
Embrace as I am embraced
By the earth.

I have become pregnant with
Love for myself.
To be whole,
I am my own lover.
Reclaiming my body from the hands
The endless hands that have touched
That would not stop touching
That could breed only death in me
Ripping and pain
My skin dusty
Wrinkled
And sucked dry

There is hope here
Though the word moves shyly
From my lips
There is newness and life here
Heavy with the smell of warm milk
Heavy and glowing.
The eternal eyes
Watching me
Whispering
Yes.

-Adelaide