Taylor Stanton

The belly bump that is my uterus is a parenthesis. It holds my secrets, the things I’d rather not say directly but leave as a sidenote or an afterthought or a piece of passing gossip whispered in your ear: What do we have here? This curve is one large fish scale, knotting me together, keeping me in place. It’s an ancient canoe made to hold you, down river, a juicy watermelon slice to sink your teeth into.

My fleshy middle is a long, long lash fallen from my mother’s eye. Place your finger on its crescent curve and dust it off her face. This is a place to come home, rest your head, and make your deepest wishes. Earth left her mysteries inside this hill of tissue, this broad leaf that could support blooms, this place of grassy heaps where one thousand ladybugs end each month, crawling into themselves, mandibles piercing mandibles, shells on soil, legs writhing, shivering from the clashes of swords. This place is a mound of well-trodden dirt. 

I am a Missouri water moccasin. Look at my cotton wad mouth. Look at my bumpy ridges. What can I sink my fangs into? Wait. In a dream, I am a boa constrictor, holding life too tightly. I wrap around, suck in, squeeze more, until I’m ready to end blood flow. I’ll do it in front of the mirror or sitting at my desk or catching my reflection in grocery store glass. 

I hold myself back by holding myself in, knotting my fish scales closer by will. I’m an expert at getting in my own way, a mermaid afraid of her own tail. Put it on my resume: Skilled at blocking her own path. The world endorses me for that, for hiding this plump protrusion, for withering behind closed doors, for erasing blood and story from my body, for trying to be picture-perfect while trying not to be in the picture at all.