Pregnant
My friends are pregnant. Six of them, swollen like ripe fruit, like bruises, like something I don't understand and can't define. They wait, sitting or walking, keeping themselves busy with preparations for the hospital, the return.
I wait too. But my book-child is late, it doesn't push for birth like human children do. I don't feel the moving mechanism, the fair ride you can't get off. I have felt close to birth many times in the six-year gestation. But it's best that I kept it inside, let it grow more, get stronger. All my food, my sleep, my dreams feed this book-child. Maybe it has grown too big to birth, maybe I will be injured in the final push.
But I won't feel the pain my friends will feel, the violence between love and love. Instead, I will agonize over my choice: is it my time? Sometimes book-children can be called back, reformed, but not always. Sometimes the parent loses heart. Books are easier to abandon.
The real joy of the book-child is in the pregnancy, the hope, the work, the secrecy. The result is angular and sharp-edged, not fat-cheeked and big-eyed. The book can't love me back, but it can reflect me, even more clearly than a human child would. It won't have my eyes, but maybe my loves, my opinions, my desires.
A compromise, the most important one of my life. Are books enough? I don't know. With my friends, I wait.
I wait too. But my book-child is late, it doesn't push for birth like human children do. I don't feel the moving mechanism, the fair ride you can't get off. I have felt close to birth many times in the six-year gestation. But it's best that I kept it inside, let it grow more, get stronger. All my food, my sleep, my dreams feed this book-child. Maybe it has grown too big to birth, maybe I will be injured in the final push.
But I won't feel the pain my friends will feel, the violence between love and love. Instead, I will agonize over my choice: is it my time? Sometimes book-children can be called back, reformed, but not always. Sometimes the parent loses heart. Books are easier to abandon.
The real joy of the book-child is in the pregnancy, the hope, the work, the secrecy. The result is angular and sharp-edged, not fat-cheeked and big-eyed. The book can't love me back, but it can reflect me, even more clearly than a human child would. It won't have my eyes, but maybe my loves, my opinions, my desires.
A compromise, the most important one of my life. Are books enough? I don't know. With my friends, I wait.
posted by Elizabeth Thorpe at 7:19 PM
3 Comments:
My advice is to surround yourself with competent nurse maids to make this book bith as easy as possible.
Also, fixate on an object in the near distance and breathe. Tell everyone you love to fuck off when you need to. And don't forget to dig your fingernails into your muse with vindictive glee. After all, he's the sonofabitch who did this to you in the first place.
Still gestating,
jcd
I dunno. I'm trying fiber. Lots and lots of fiber.
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