Nine months: what you may be concerned about

1. Stretch marks
I have become road-mapped inscribed
the scars I imagined when out of my element a half-life ago
and trailing tentacles of jellyfish made for bursts of electricity
unseen wriggling sawteeth of pain
now blooming on my pot-holed pot-belly
and like a snorkeller gone too far from land
sunk too low for the bass call and response
of ragged breaths through a plastic reed
I am bitten blown-cheeked all ballast as you ascend
through saline depths your depth chart burned onto my belly
the skin pebbling
as you struggle to beach us both

2. Swollen ankles
I have become ham-hocked fat-ankled and groggy
my legs tree-trunks not slimmed and turned
but driftwood blasted and bloated
that seeps water when squeezed
making me a creature not of water nor of land
bobbing sloshing bleating for shore

3. Group B Strep
I have become colonized a teeming type
that flushes infection
that flushes all day all night long
you junk and wreck me into another jurisdiction
turning me into a displaced person
even as you find finger and footholds in my cargo hold
and climb the ropy lumps of my organs
the slave’s collar of my cervix
now the only thing between you
and the light
Did you know I would be this kind of host