Five Stages of Stretchmarks by Megan McOmber

"Each day, I explore the new patterns of my body, lifting my stomach, pinching it over my thumbs to turn the base to my eyes for inspection. My body now replicates rippled sand under ocean waves. My body feels like a foreign wasteland. I am not my own. I do not know this body." Megan McOmber is currently pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at BYU. She has published in Mount Hope Magazine, Under the Gum Tree, The Pinch, Hunger Mountain, and was the 2023 and 2024 David O. Mckay essay contest winner. This was read by Paige Northrup, a student at Brigham Young University. Wayfare: Explorations in Faith is a production of BYUradio.