Growth

I can’t see much change. Never did, really. It was only three months.     I should have paid more attention to those books. How was I supposed to memorize the   timeline?

I guess there’s a little bit of a pudge there. I wonder why it’s not flat again now the baby’s gone? Funny how I’m only just noticing it now. I should get to the gym and work it off, but I don’t think I will yet. I like it.                    Curvy.             Soft.

Feminine.

Motherly.

Is that a hair? Several of ‘em. Hormones, probably. Are they there to stay, or will they stop growing without the hormones to feed them? They’re permanent, I bet.

Like mom’s, when I was a kid and she’d be getting ready for work in her underwear and her     belly button            surrounded by hair, wiry black curly hairs like tiny springs. I wondered then why I didn’t have any like her          and later was glad I didn’t. I was the hair. She got them from me, from carrying me.

These, though, are fine, blonde, straight. They weren’t pickled in the juice of a full nine months. But they’re there, a flag marking that something important was here, that this stomach was, for a short time, home to something foreign and possibly great.