Mom

"Were you afraid of all these things?"

The nausea, the aching,

the giving way and breaking of your dermal 

tissues stretching

in waxy stripes, your lovely lines

and ligaments giving way to mine,

your architecture sagging

to give me my first home?

I was twenty and in nursing school

and horrified to read the list

of symptoms, seemingly endless, that happen 

during pregnancy.

To think that I inflicted all

this damage on the one who calls me

love - the horror that I might

experience it too...

"Weren't you afraid to lose your body?"

She laughed, just like a hero

on a city wall, who fears no cruel invasion,

like the child who

owns the sandbox, like the goddess

Juno, Mistress of Olympus,

highest queen, no matter

how that wretched scamp Zeus cheats.

She laughed, the dauntless mother

who so fiercely loves this daughter

who, despite all that she taught her cannot shake 

anxiety.

"This body? I'd have lost it

anyways," she said. "What cost? It

wasn't something I could keep. So why not

lose it for you, love?"

Someday they will crown her - 

the pristine-curated women,

sculpted bodies still ungiven like unending 

rainless skies,

marble monuments and pictures

ever-changeless as the Scriptures,

luminous acropoli - crown her

Unbreakable, the Bravest One,

who took on pregnancy and

laughs at fear.