When I grew my son in my body, they said

"Doesn't she look amazing!"

"You look fabulous"

"You look great"

When I hold him in my arms, they say nothing.

Being basically aroace and not recognizing my age, like being an adult, which i struggle w bcs of lack of common age specific milestones like graduating, getting a license, and how i never drank alcohol, and still am a virgin, etc..

The nurse asks if I have both feet on the scale . [Poem ending with a line by Margaret Atwood]

and I start reciting Atwood. Truth is

it’s been a long time since I felt balanced. Longer, since I saw myself reflected in something greater than a number. The gap between my soles

and the soil gets bigger every day. I entered this world as a feather. I will exit a bird.

All this to say, I’m used to being underestimated.

The nurse doesn’t know how naked I’ve been since birth. That I learned to tiptoe before I learned to walk. She can’t count how many pounds of my flesh were lost in the leaving. The light years I starved for breath only to have it pinched. How the last person I thought to leap for let me

fall. She can’t imagine how quick

the heart shrinks in zero gravity.

How a dark mouth opened to swallow me and a poem saved my life.

She doesn’t know the string of words that’s coming out of me now like a peeled vein is all that’s holding me tethered to a few square feet of this earth.