LITERATURE/TRAVEL

Baby Fruit: A poem

The following poem analogizes the developing fetus, embryo and baby to its corresponding fruit or vegetable. It elucidates various evolutionary milestones encountered from within the womb.

 

Baby Fruit

 

Conceiving of you, my Seedling.  

Has been a blessing

And an eye-opening journey

Through vapors of nausea and cream

 

We have become a team, Cookie. 

Navigating terrain

Unfamiliar yet pain

Full, my corpse encases fragility

 

Slowly unfolding into Rose.

Petals, your organs

Its your veins, its roots

spreading into the world from underneath

 

Concealed, you were once a Blueberry                                                 

Whose neural tube formed

In conjunction with my awe

And eager flutters of discovery

 

Drawn into life’s inseam, 

My embryo Bean,

Your organ systems and limbs

Materialize into my future

 

Olive grove. Our little zatoun, 

Blanketed in green

Love etches incubated

By fractals of nerve-laden placenta,

 

You evolved into plump Fig. 

Whose facial features

Start to fractalize from molds

Of timeless parents’ personalities

 

Connected, beaded and sewn.

Into delightful edges,

Tapestries with corners

And cores that interminably quibble

 

My Lime- little lemon, you once

Were at a fork to

Becoming male; female you roared

In the casing of majestic tang, flare.

 

Bends, twists and bulges from within, 

Curvy sweet Peach—

Your eyebrows and lashes form

Fruity-sponge arcs now able to feel stress.

 

Robust prime Apple, you endure. 

Bone ossification.

Neck lifts, alongside bladder

Trickling urine—you hear my voice now

 

You can even suck your thumbs now. 

Soft Avocado—

Developing thicker skin and

Sculpting armor, core and facial expressions.

 

Red and fiery Pomegranate Baby Fruit

Your blood and fat gauge

Temperature, hot and cold,

As fingers grip umbilical chord

 

Juicy moisture-locking Mango,

Nutritiously framed

By vernix and lanugo,

Your sebaceous glands extend and engorge

 

Elongated Banana child

With movements still mild,

Hemoglobin comes to swarm

Amid first green feces: meconium.

 

You are growing warmer inside.

Ripening Eggplant

With spine and alveoli

Budding into fossilized human molds

 

Inextricably linked like Grapes.

Whose vines sprawl into

Fingertips uniquely you

hiccupping, yawning, balanced and aware

 

Neural synapses grow acute— 

Cauliflower brain,

Retinas sharpen focus

As does recognition of who and where.

 

Cocooning into Coconut.

Where kicks and stretches

Magnify from within shell

Streamlined with sulci and gyri brain folds

 

Almost four pounds and 31 weeks, 

Long thin Zucchini

Accumulates lean muscle

And fat to regulate your temperature

 

Outside the body; Pineapple, 

Textured and immune

Baby can fight infections,

And Absorb antibodies; skin smoothens

 

Papaya-big now, obstructed

Kicks and somersaults

Baby is now suckling

In preparation for la vie outside.

 

Romain-Lettuce head flowering.

Out toward the world,

Circulation, digestion

And immune systems well-equipped and strong

 

Spray gold halo from bunches of.

Bushy Kale; she rolls,

Stretches, adjusts, bends and twists

Light weaves thinning uterus

As angels spearhead developing lungs.

 

Corpulent melon-Honeydew, 

Cantaloupe round—

Birth canal bound, baby eats

Amniotic fluid of vernix+ hair

 

Preparing a first poo, Pumpkin.

You, with rosier

Hue—baby’s brain enlarges

By 30 percent amid fattened folds.

 

Watermelon womb expansive, 

Sitting up long hurts,

But I span, did stair master,

Weights and yoga up to your arrival]

 

Two days over 41 weeks.

We let you strengthen,

Awaiting your conviction

to emerge solo, but no: Induction

 

I relished your final flutters— 

The bizarre symptoms

And restrictions blessing my year;

Sad to have to flow into letting go.

 

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