Skin has a memory.

There’s this little squirmy hitchhiker who has been sharing my body for the past sixteen weeks. They say it’s not much larger than an avocado, nestled in this large, round home that keeps stretching, expanding — showing so much more quickly on this, my second pregnancy. I’ve already traded in for maternity clothes. We’ve only been together four months, but this little creature has wasted no time getting comfortable, getting settled, moving all its stuff in, kicking against my cesarean scar as if it owned the place.

Considering it wasn’t until after Thomas had already moved his bed into my old tiny house that I realized we must be living together, I guess this little critter takes after its father.

It strikes me, as I watch my belly expand beneath the network of stretch marks that spiderweb the length of my body, that skin has a memory. It did all of this, fifteen years ago. It created cushions from my breasts, from my stomach to cradle my daughter, the first tenant of my uterus. It’s been over a decade, now, but it’s simply picking up where it left off, using the same old blueprints to make the necessary renovations.  It’s even stretching along the same fissures, to make sure there’s enough room, to make enough space for this tiny stranger.

What other memories do we carry in our bodies? What other stories does the skin whisper, does the bone keep secret?