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Poetry | November/December 2021

We start this blank canvas

By Nina Smilow

He's taken to touching lightly my stomach and 
        	joking at its most terrifying ability. 
 
I've never seen beyond its banal responsibility 
        	to digest a day
 
or give flight to an impulse, the follow 
            through of butterfly's wings which met us. 
 
I try to picture the power my anatomy shares.
        	I'm stuck on my body,
 
how we've communicated in betrayal.
        	Exchanged pain between us
 
so I can't see the agreement 
        	to make good on its potential. 
 
My mother called it an effortless action,
        	that gave me the shape of my eyes. 
 
I'm terrified for what I might give away. 
        	Effortlessly dispose. 
 
Who trusts someone so unsure of their bones?

3 replies on “We start this blank canvas”

Carol Lyntonsays:
November 18, 2021 at 8:10 am

A beautiful description of how women feel about their bodies. It reveals our fear of embracing their potential; our potential.

Reply
Kathysays:
November 24, 2021 at 10:35 pm

Wonderful body ––life giving!

Reply
Kathleensays:
January 10, 2022 at 12:20 pm

A brilliant new poem on literarymama.com by Nina Smilow! So many resonances in 17 lines: a male joking about a woman’s body, pregnancy and its urges, the feeling of life within (like butterfly wings), the ways our bodies can betray us, and may have already done so. There are the pains, the potentials that may never be realized, the way we might pass on traits we don’t choose, and how a new being will be blessed or hindered by all of it. To take on such responsibility can be terrifying, given what we may have received, and know: we have no power over what traits that will pass to a child. Thank you!!!

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