Pregnancy Anaphora by Bridget Bell

If pregnancy is a season, the answer
is not spring but winter: the body a cave,
a holding cell of hibernation. Of nesting.
Of torpor. If pregnancy plays music, the violin
and its hollow wooden body, its ribs, its belly, its strings
hitched taut to tuning pegs. Its neck and the pressure applied
to make its vibrating cry. If pregnancy is a planet, ever-changing
Pluto, ill-defined, ice-rock body spinning in a dark zone
billions of miles from the sun. If pregnancy is an animal,
the star-nosed mole, a spray of nerve endings flowering
from the face; the eyes only able to capture
light and dark. Purple, speckled bells,
if pregnancy is a flower, the foxglove, long stalk
of poisonous seeds boiled down
to make the heart pump its red blood faster.
If pregnancy is a color, that color is red. Platelets tint
spit pink in the sink’s curved basin. Veins like lace,
and nothing can keep that red inside the lines.

Bridget Bell teaches English at Durham Technical Community College in North Carolina and proofreads for Four Way Books, a literary press based in NYC. Her work has been published in literary outlets such as The New Ohio Review, Zone 3, Spinning Jenny, and DIAGRAM.