2nd Prize – Rebecca Smithson with:

Expecting

I wait for you. The globe of my belly bulges,
Taut and heavy with anticipation.
But you are not what I expect.
You slip from me like a shadow,
Like a fish, stained grey and still as the sea.
They wake you from your watery sleep,
Kneading you roughly in terrycloth
Until you let out a lyrical wail,
And press your appled skin
Against my bare, sweat-salted heart.
“Congratulations. He’s beautiful.”
I smile and clutch you to me in tight apology,
My eyes as blank as the bright white ceiling.
I have no idea what you are.
At home, you do not cry –
You scream, your lashes dry as bone,
Hurling out an endless stream of vowels
From between fat purple cheeks
Until there is nothing left of me but holes.
We build selves from that nothing, you and I both.
Your feet on my belly, my palm on the soft down
Of your tear-stained fontanelle,
We prickle at each other with tiredness and temper.
I fall in love with you by accident.

Your laughter has the brief beauty
Of airborne bubbles; mine is crackly and dog-eared,
Worn as old paper. I look so strange through your eyes.
Your hand curls inside mine, a fistful of promise,
And in the slow roll of weeks and months
Since you swam to the surface of me,
I become precisely what you expect.
I am not who I was, my love.
But I am someone.