The Fourth Month

Abstract

For several days I thought they were just the soft rumblings of my own guts, these dim twistings low in my belly. But then one morning as we lay in bed, the twister’s father put his hand on my stomach and felt a nudge at the same time I felt a poke. After months of gyrating unobserved, this creature had finally made itself indisputably known, its delicate flutters like a message from a distant planet or a deserted island: Look—there is life here, too! It tapped against its father’s palm once more, and then was still, indifferent to the hot blaze of tears in its parents’ eyes.

Woman is the artist of the imagination and the child in the womb is the canvas whereon she painteth her pictures

Paracelsus (1493-1541)