Exclusion

The year after losing our first baby, four of my best friends got pregnant. The rejection I feel as a result of not getting to be a part of their (and the countless others who have given birth since we began our infertility journey) group never really gets easier to bear.

This poem is a bit gross but given how much I absolutely abhor scab picking, it helped me capture the feeling of finding out over and over again that another one was leaving me behind.

Step right up and take your turns
Nibble at my scab
Pick at its unsettled borders
Make my bloody center incurably deep.

Rip it off slowly
For the smooth of my skin
Is growing impatient.

This one captures my longing for a body unlike my own.

Her body ebbs and flows

Liquid with round anticipation.
Her middle gushing and mushing
To the sound of unyielding dub dips.

My body bristles and clanks 

Solidified with flat disappointment.
My middle begging and pleading 
To the sound of silence.

This painting was my attempt to capture this poem. This was my second painting and I had not yet figured out how to make flesh color or how to paint faces! When I completely ruined the painting with their heads, I decided to cut them off. I love my friends despite their ability to get pregnant so I don't mean for their headlessness to imply any type of symbolic violence! Although my husband encouraged me to repaint it because the original drawing's heads were pretty good, I decided to leave it. This way the focus is more on the bellies in comparison to my own.