All I can do is write this.

[Jerrybaldy]

My abdomen swells daily
beneath the sag
of two bags
that forget the desire
they inspired.
Was the pause
the menopause
or has this old lady
a mutant baby
inside?
If so
it's afloat in vino.
If not
its my liver
engorged to submission
or a blackness
eating cells
that will never burst to life.
Or will it cry
as I cry now?
Sipping red wine,
sucking grey smoke,
that it may inflate
those two bags
and return me
to any time
when I didnt
have a life
or a death
inside me.

[Delta40]

heading south, weighed by the chains of motherhood. you make it sound so totally bleak. where's my vino.....

Jerryesque as ever.

[Jerrybaldy]

Its a baby to a mother who can't be one or maybe sclerosis or cancer. I made it no bleaker than it is.

[Delta40]

I chose motherhood instead of deteriorating health

bleak is your middle name Jerry!

[Haunted]

afloat in vino
yikes...

yet outshine'd by the stunning end:
return me
to any time
when I didnt
have a life
or a death
inside me.

[Jerrybaldy]

No. That is David. I only posted this as the subject will never read it.

[Haunted]

David?

[Jerrybaldy]

middle name :)

[Haunted]

J.d.b?

[hillwalker]

A fairly dark piece - for some reason I pictured a bag-lady perhaps with her bottle of 'red biddy' - her ruined body shrunken by malnutrition, her belly swollen by cirrhosis rather than pregnancy....
But regardless of the true motivation behind this, it's a powerful poem made more so by the brevity of the lines and lack of self-pity.

H

[Jerrybaldy]

It is my sister and I find out the answer tomorrow.