Today
I Wear My Stretchmarks Like Tattoos
to show
I am a woman
whose belly has billowed
a mainsail on a pirate ship
on its way to treasure
a queen-size-bed topsheet
on a new clothesilne in March
they make
silver parantheses
around my freckled navel
tiny river tributaries
from the cold spring of my joy
pattern rising to the touch
like fired-rice-grain china
and oh
the way the sunlight catches
above my hipline skirts
when the music births itself again
and I start moving I start
moving and with my daughter
dance
-Katharyn Howd Machan
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