This Body Is Growing a Person
By Sheree Fitch
Why say: I'm going to have a baby?
You give birth.
But you never own.
You never have.
To say baby is to say cherub cheeks and dimpled wrists
warm snuggle bunny baby bundle.
Sure there's a faint echo of crying and smell of baby shit
but both are sweet to ear and nose in conception.
Say instead:
This body is growing a person.
Picture that chalky fish on the ultrasound screen as
infant, toddler, child, adolescent
a grown person with a mortgage
no job, child support to pay.
Picture inside you a temper tantrum
a three-year-old scribbling on the walls
a face full of acne
a lip being stitched
a weeping teenager broken-hearted for the first time
a door-smashing wall-pounding adolescent
a runaway
an addict
a crackpot conservative, a lunatic lefty
a vegan
a vegetable
a prostitute
a convict
a schizophrenic
a tightrope walker, a high-rise window washer
a human trying to be.
Picture yourself inside yourself.
(Now there's a terrifying thought.)
For nine months see baby
an old person with false teeth, pleated face
halitosis, osteoporosis, a bruised heart.
Say:
This body is growing a person.
Be prepared
when baby stands before you
framed in the arch of a doorway
waving goodbye with a promise to call
a baby you can no longer hold
no longer rock
no longer kiss and make it better for.
Just watch:
as he goes out
into a world
that most days
is just not good enough
for any baby you might dare to call your own.
1993, Sheree Fitch. In the collection "In this house are many women, and other poems", Goose Lane Editions.