I look at my body and I see...

I look at my body and  I see...
The grooves in the belly as desire waves
A growing desire putting on weight
An anxious desire of meeting you
 and not waiting too much to see your face.
I look at my body and I see...
The bump in the abdomen zone gently shaped
The maternity mirror, magic there anchored
Proud I show it to the world, motherhood full.
I look at my body and I see...
The sinuous curve at the bottom of my spine
The blessed burden of gestation responsibility
In the enchantment I sustain our happiness.
I look at my body and I see...
The fragility in the bones, the child's tenderness
The tooth ache which visits me from time to time
Nutrition for my sweet babies in the belly.
I look at my body and I see...
The skin flabbiness it became
The man and the woman in love, no complaint
And from passion the seeds there germinating.
I look at my body and I see...
The lovely sculpture one has made
The enchanted charm in the eyes of the sculptors
Who look at the body and keep working on the soul.
I feel in these motherhood scars
The enormous well-being of someone
Who gives it all without asking return.
I receive all the time through these wounds
Fragments of happiness from the present and from the past.
I recall, missing and longing, the maternity pains
Feeling all the time inside my alive flesh
My beloved children their premature movements
As if they were small mice moving beneath the carpet.
When through my skin languid I pampered them
They communicated to the mother waving they knew me loving
And today they still wave sheltered in my eternal lap
They ask me lullaby songs from gone times
That I sing indefatigably into our ears.
They know I love them and that they're safe.
The nave string has been doomly cut
Though that action hasn't raised a wall between us.
The navels show us endlessly
The eternal act and the unconditional love of maternity.

(by Conceição Sousa)