brushing my hair while i look at my pregnant body in the mirror
inspecting it from all angles
thinking of all the women i know
and know of
who never, in forty weeks, get this big
and! i'm only halfway!
it's going to get worse
i'm going to regret every extra calorie and every missed step
we spend a few minutes in this toxic patriarchal spiral
the hairbrush and i
and then my mind flips through the pages of More Than A Body
and i set down the patriarchal poison
look what this body is doing, at this very second as i stand here.
multiplying millions of cells
building
a home for a new soul
before my very eyes
this is body is powerful
my power is not of the peter parker variety
mine coats the inside of each cell wall
obediently doubling itself,
constructing a home
regardless of how i bully the body it helped my mother build.
it does not care what i think
it knows its purpose
it's not wasting time, listening to me critique its work
in fact, it doesn't even let me decide how to use it
it has never tasted the patriarchal toxins i've been eating for 32 years
it is not beholden to
the christine quinn standard of beauty
because my super power, while it's mine, isn't
it's just a single helping
poured over me by a Force who knows best of all
that i'm not a superhero or supermodel
i'm
a house.
have you ever seen a house
belittling its own 2x4s or copper pipes?
a house knows its power
it knows the neighbors
cannot with their gossip or their pinterest boards
change
the strength of the structure
or the square footage
it knows the power with which it was built
and for only eighteen more weeks
i am
a house
