Belly

The mirror shows me how my end begins:

expectant paunch ballooning out the skin,

my stomach pushes out the cotton shirt.

Or else my death was born onto the earth

with me and is this shadow I see gaze

out of the mirror’s labyrinth, and fear

is facing my own face that disappears

like shower steam’s evaporating glaze.

Or else I am my death, bloated fat cells

within me are time bombs and the last tick

detonates the body politic.

Or else it’s something more than I can tell:

thing in the mirror, a stillbirth, unsexed,

pushing the belly out. And what comes next?