“Balloons” by Peyton Jones

You will start inside of me.
Right here, in the eggs I have carried since birth.
Since the day I was born and had a large bow placed on the top of my head.
You will grow inside my uterus.
You were the lucky one.
Your siblings escaped this existence as blood.
Absorbed into cotton, then flushed away. Or tossed.
My stomach is your first home, but you will grow up to make fun of it.
To look at my extra skin and laugh, as if it did not create you.
As if I was not gashed open, in efforts to remove you.
More blood.
Does the female anatomy
Make you so uncomfortable
Because you know you would be nothing without it?
It baffles me.
The way men are repulsed by blood.
Do they forget it is what inflates them?
Like cocky balloons, scared to be popped.
Your jokes will revolve around my face, around the shape of my eyeliner and lips.
You will call me a clown, I am sure.
I will carry you for nine months of my life. I will dedicate that time to you.
And you only.
My belly swollen,
My breasts rubber.
My body will rip itself apart
Just for you to grow up
And rip it apart again.