Sometimes I wish I was pregnant again
so I could feel that ridge of pressure pushing
out from under my ribs, touch that taut smooth
bulging dome that sloped down to the pubis
I could no longer see. I liked the way
the steering wheel would glide its half-ring
round and back just below my popped-out navel,
the moored sense of cradling a world inside.
The visitor I transported and fed was restless
as a bee and I enjoyed the delicate flutterings,
then the soft padded kicks and tiny fists
punching inside of me. I liked easing down
into bed, rolling on my side with anchoring
gravity, and in that great balancing act
of walking or going down stairs, I felt
acutely real, new life having filled the void
in which the flimsiest sense of self had tried,
and always failed, to lay its claim.
My vague disappointment disappeared,
and the detached miasma I drifted through,
an existence that had always seemed, before,
likely to fly out the window, or evaporate.
I had someone to be and someone to be for,
and although I was terrified of the helplessness
a women feels when life's most strenuous force
begins its rending, beyond pain's mitigation,
I was happily huge, joyfully holding.
-Gray Jacobik
...not that I am ready anytime soon, but you know this is how I feel about being pregnant.
