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Self-Portrait After Four Months of Trying to Conceive
Kate Kadleck
Somewhere in the caverns of my body, all the
supplements huddle together, strategize about
how to craft a life. My heels are still cracked,
though I’ve made a habit of coating my feet
in coconut oil, then slipping them into socks
just as my sister-in-law suggested. Something
about cold toes signaling a cold womb–we
don’t want that, do we? At least my hair is
rich mahogany, my eyes a hopeful topaz blue.
I am sufficiently charming, I tell myself, to
convince the un-ghost of an infant to settle
in my crevices. I am trying to whittle my
skeleton into a city where something
unerring and exquisite might, against all
odds, take root. Might, blessedly, bloom.
Kate Kadleck
Somewhere in the caverns of my body, all the
supplements huddle together, strategize about
how to craft a life. My heels are still cracked,
though I’ve made a habit of coating my feet
in coconut oil, then slipping them into socks
just as my sister-in-law suggested. Something
about cold toes signaling a cold womb–we
don’t want that, do we? At least my hair is
rich mahogany, my eyes a hopeful topaz blue.
I am sufficiently charming, I tell myself, to
convince the un-ghost of an infant to settle
in my crevices. I am trying to whittle my
skeleton into a city where something
unerring and exquisite might, against all
odds, take root. Might, blessedly, bloom.