gravid

I came to my mother pregnant

with a question I did not know how to ask.

It was the kind of question that

sits low in your stomach and rides hard

on the cradle of your hips, pushing

everything outward and upward

in order to make space for it.

I came to my mother, pregnant

with a question I did not know how to ask,

and she took one look at me and gathered me

close to her, cradling my swelling soul

in the shelter of her own flesh. She rocked me

like the child I no longer was, like the child

I had not been in for a long time, and as

she did this she gave me the only answer

that she had:

“I love you. I love you. I love you,

and you are mine, and you are more

than enough, more than worthy, more

than anything else. Be full, daughter, be

full of yourself and full of questions and full

of wonder and love and rage and power, and

when you are full to bursting then turn

and fill your own daughter when she comes.”