Oh, my child, I remember the first time I felt you quicken inside me—like an eyelash flickering deep in my womb or like the tug of a trout on the end of the line.

It was you, my child, wasn’t it? Was it you just coming into being?

I remember the first time I lay on my stomach and felt you. I thought, “Did a sock get rolled up under the sheet?” and I realized you had begun to take up space inside me.

I remember watching you grow as my belly got bigger and wider and rounder and how you claimed the territory of my hips and my breasts and my waist to afford yourself greater acreage.

I remember feeling you expand inside me as you kicked and squirmed and pushed your way into yourself.

I remember the intimacy of being pregnant—the achingly beautiful pain of it, the stretching and the wondering and the awful strangeness yet familiarity of it. I remember the animal of it, the music of it, the sweat of it, the ugliness and fear of it.

But most of all, I remember you.

~

~

Let us not speak

of how well

I remember you

or of how well

you remember me.

Let us not speak of

our love

of our oneness

of our being

together in that way or

of how you filled me

and satisfied me

and pleased me

with your presence

your growth

your heart

beating, beating, beating.

Let us only

know it

and hold it to ourselves

For it is what it is

as it is ours

to keep

forever

our secret love affair.

~

Author’s Note: I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to my friend (and fellow Elephant Journal author) Kimberly Lo with whose permission I reprint her picture above. When I saw her shining so radiantly on Facebook I was immediately inspired to write about the beauty of the secret smile on her face.

~

Relephant Read:

9 Ways that Pregnancy prepares you for Life with Small Children.

~

Author: Carmelene Siani

Editor: Alli Sarazen

Photo: Mahalie Stackpole/Flickr & Courtesy of Author/Kimberly Lo