It’s Hard to Write a Poem…

about being pregnant. But I wrote one when I was only 10 weeks along. I have been saying how hard it is to write about pregnancy because it is something so universal and yet, so absolutely personal…putting it in a crazy category filled with cliches and sentimentality, but also unique perspectives and individual feelings. Pregnancy poems are really just love poems, and let’s be honest, love poems can be a dime a dozen – but being in love is an overwhelmingly intimate feeling; it can sometimes persuade you that no one else has ever felt it before.

Ten Weeks, Five Days

This week, my belly started.

Like an oval egg wrapped

in this skin I have known

my whole life.

The culmination of love

growing in blood and soft bone.

It feels so cliché, to write about

pregnancy. To write

about something that millions

of women have done.

Something I tried once before,

and failed at.

Growing a life –

is so common, and

vastly original.

It is poetic, and excruciatingly

difficult to write with trueness,

what is being cultivated.

In my body.

In my only body.

A body no one else will ever have, or feel.

Only I feel this.

Only I experience building this person.

It is mine.

And yet, has belonged

to so many others.

I think of fingers extending

and turning to fists.

Of a spinal cord shaping

the frame of a body I will

hold and love.

Of feet budding toes like tulips.

Of eyes that will soon open,

and ears, that in a matter of days,

will hear the dull echo of my voice.

The words I now speak will forever

cradle meaning that I still can’t fully

understand.