Her only future is femininity. How much she’s worth to herself, determined by the proportions of her breasts, the strength of her hips, and weather or not she’ll marry someone worthy of being a father. But don’t assume she’s worthy of being a mother just because she’s a woman. With all her heart she wants to be, but fear strikes her cold thinking she might never have the chance. Might never be proud of a belly bump, might never feel a second hunger in her belly and begin eating for two or maybe three.

Even with the odds of rebellion, she considers every young soul precious. A soul given life through her is reward enough, the chance of that life returning her love, having her eyes, inheriting her courage is too much to ask for, instead she’ll fight for it. Pray every night that the next man is the one. Plead on her knees that they are the lucky 50%.

These hopes transform into anxiety as she lays thin in her big bed, squirming and writhing, trying to fill the empty space’s beside her. clutching her abdomen thinking “It can’t be useless, not mine.” Telling herself a little girl is in there waiting to breathe. Waiting to surpass crib death and grow up knowing her mother is just as strange as her. Grow up knowing her hearty sobs will never be ignored, that all her laughter will be reciprocated, That even though she comes homes with boys that smell like cigarettes, her mother and father with never let her believe she is anything less than loved, she will never feel worthless or forgotten, like her parents had. She will know that her mother, waited for her, that even decades before she was born, she was expected, that with every pregnant woman her mother laid eyes upon, she begged her uterus to play follow the leader, begged her belly to be something more than empty.

That even though her mother raised he fist and shouted “I AM MORE THAT A BODY FOR BABIES” shame would cloak her if she were unable to bare them. That with out her daughter who might never lover her back, she could not look at herself, and feel proud of a flat stomach, and perfect breasts, she had dreamed to pass them on. Her daughter will know she is a dream come true, and she, will never feel empty.