Who needs doves when you have pigeons?

 The nausea is setting in, and my gut is still otherwise troubling me, but these are the complaints of a dull sort of account. Sometimes a sudden cramp round my pelvis when I twist too quickly has me worried of miscarriage. But I remain soberly hopeful, even of the slightly frightening business of having even less inclination for reading and written expression if there's a small little new person needing much of me. I can, for now, nurse little dreams of learning history and figures and Mandarin with an eager child. Considering what name I would want to give, have been leaning to giving the father's choice so he can't shirk a claim as my mother's latter choice did with his own, though I think it unlikely with my own choice – but unsure if maybe I'd like to give my baby my own bastard name. Hoping still for a girl, considering how I may have to build the story in case of a boy. Is it a mistake for me to want what I want here? I like the father's choice of name for a daughter, a veiled one, a tree, a whore at the crossroads, a choice. I'd worry so much more for the survival of a son. A daughter can be a whore like the mother. Too many sons die alone, sons die in rooms alone like my little brother. I am the daughter my mother would have preferred to have been a son, and I am far away, loved, loved by those who would desire more cleverness of me rather than less, I am in the place as unthinkable for my sort to live as Antarctica, I have warm socks for the cold climate, warm socks to keep my feet warm enough to conceive twice at the first try. There is so much to say. I am sitting at the donut place in Brooklyn where I sit and have a little coffee and something to eat while my love visits our kind and handsome Russian bodyworker, I wait my turn, a gynecologist in his country of birth, he will ask me about the progress of my pregnancy as I remove my clothes and lie on a table, and he will use powerful massage guns to coax my tight, confused muscles to release my blood. I wait my turn. Right now I know three mothers expecting babies at the start of spring. I'd have expected my first at the end of spring. This one would come at the start of autumn. I wait my turn.

Yum.

Parthenogenesis in sharks, the pulse of the seahorse's belly as it gives birth to hundreds of young, the little deposit of sperm held in a detached arm offered by the male blanket octopus to the great female who is many thousands times his size. Today I once again contemplated saying in one way or another to someone I'd like to make love to that I'd like to make love to him, but once again I have not.