Questions for the Outward Curve of My Stomach, Where I Sometimes Rest My Hand and Pretend to be Pregnant
What have I inherited?
Is it salt?
Why does it sit so heavy in my stomach?
Aunties: why are our words for stomach and soul the same?
I am a woman: I was born with all my future children inside of me.
Is there a DNA test for this?
For salt?
Where does it all go, if I don’t have a daughter?
Will it be the salt people sprinkle on their plums?
A lavender scrub to massage a woman’s legs?
Returned to the earth, to feed a small cucumber garden?
Whose turn will it be to hold these glassy splinters?
Who can I assure the hurt will pass?
Whose hand to hold?
Whose belly to clutch when the jagged edges cut deep inside?
My aunties once scrubbed a chair for two hours after I bled on it.
Header photograph © Hananah Zaheer.