The tummy.
Flatten your tummy.
Get rid of belly fat.
Get the abs you’ve always dreamed of.
With this one magic secret.
And if that doesn’t work,
And you’ve gone the way of the
10,000 sit ups and
One thousand and one pilates classes
And yoga just isn’t doing it for you,
And neither did the grapefruit diet
or the GI, or low-fat, low-carb, low-everything
(except time, effort, and cost)
There is always
The knife.
Or, when you find yourself perplexed by this extra flesh,
Patting yourself down in front of the mirror,
You could hear the love of your child’s voice,
The one who admires the soft tummy,
(Soft, even for a pillow)
Who falls asleep, tucked around the love, the soft
The belly from which zie came,
The belly and the child inextricably bound
After this time apart.