The bodies
of all the women
I love
are filled with daughters
 
They are so happy
to be so full,
weighted
with tiny promises—
growing less translucent,
less impossible
to imagine
 
I am not
unhappy
I am not
a body filled
with another body
though I know
vacancy and vessel
share the same
hollow core
 
Inside
the roundness
of my bedroom
mirror, the moon
is waxing
gibbous— milky half
convex against
a sterile sky 
 
Beside its inversion
I practice mimicry—
arching my back,
pushing
my belly inside
the open
parentheses
of my hands
 
Pretending
my body
is full, that my body
is the body
of someone
that I love

—Nina C. Peláez

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