after taste                                                           

I load up my hand basket with asian pears, watermelon, navel oranges and organic grapes from 

California, single handedly and exponentially increasing my carbon footprint with deft fingers and an unappealing amount of saliva. It had occurred to me earlier in the day that the only thing I could possibly consider eating was watermelon. In October. In rural New England. But my stomach sways and lurches in the fruit aisle and once again I worry that I have been lead astray, foiled by a tempestuous and mercurial body that maintains its right to revolt at any food at any time and any moment. 

I bite into the soft rind of what should have been a crisp pear and spit it out immediately. In a paper bag to the right of me, piled up on the passenger seat, sits yet another failed and expensive food experiment. I open the car door, lean forward and spit like a trucker. I cannot contain the water my mouth makes and am always looking for places to (un)delicately lean forward and spit. 

appetite

I don't have hyperemesis gravidum and I have an infinite amount of sympathy and respect for women who weather that storm of parity. I am probably a little bit dehydrated but otherwise well, usually the nausea prevents me from eating which prevents me from puking. Most recently, for about four days on now, I have tentatively begun eating again, marveling at the strength of both starvation and total food aversion, taking tiny bites of a syrupy pancake, sipping on instant hot coco. On Friday, in a moment made of little else than mercy and miracle, I ate half of an eggplant parmesan sandwich on my way to the barn. 

apprehension

At night I lay awake and tend to my wonders, my worries, my greatest anxieties. I know far too much and all the causes of first trimester loses fume like a toxic cloud in the dark hours of morning. I get up and frown at my mostly flat stomach, worry about my painless breasts. I worry for all the speakable reasons and the unspeakable ones too. I worry in ways I cannot say out loud but that press down hard and unremitting. In the dark and tiny hours of morning I worry that if  I ever lost this baby, would I have the strength to have another?