A stranger’s pregnant belly
plops over elastic-waisted jeans,
and a wish kicks its legs
inside me. I wish it
would sit still.
Forest fires blaze
through Quebec, orange
smoke obscuring the sky
of the Mid-Atlantic,
ushering in the new
normal: Tyger Tyger,
burning bright,
burning brush
and rushing through
subdivisions, making
ash out of loved lives.
Is delivering a child
into the smoldering of
the Anthropocene
an act of selfishness
or hope. Still, I want
to feel my breasts
milk-heavy,
like little wine bags.
When I hold
my friend’s tender
newborn, I pretend
she is my own—
journey out of her nursery
into the secret life
where I am a parent,
where the little spittle
on my shoulder
is my daughter’s
spittle, and therefore
made lovely. Her tiny fists
yank my loose hair
and pull me back
into the room
where I coo
and cuddle her
as her big eyes search
my face, saying nothing
of the coming dark.
“I’ve spent much of my thirties debating whether having children was for me. I love children, but I have growing concerns about the irreversible effects of climate change and the kind of future we are creating for the next generation to inherit. Also, as someone who struggles with Bipolar I Disorder (as well as Generalized Anxiety Disorder and cPTSD), I worried over my abilities to adequately care for both myself and small children simultaneously. Ultimately, at the age of thirty-seven, shortly after the reelection of Donald Trump, which marked a shift in attitudes toward women’s bodily autonomy, I decided to get a Paragard IUD, which lasts ten years (likely to the end of my fertility). “
Stevie Edwards is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press, 2023), Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). She holds a PhD from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Cornell University.