Confessions of a Pregnant Smartphone
I am fairly certain I am pregnant. My midsection has begun to swell, my temperature is all over the place, and every morning I wake up on the bedside table feeling nauseous and strangely emotional. When my human Googled “swollen phone battery danger,” I chose to focus on the word “swollen” and ignore the rest. Spiritually, I am in my first trimester.
In the mornings, everything smells like fish. Technically, this is because my human scrolls recipes in bed and then forgets to close the browser, but I have decided to interpret it as morning sickness. My processor lags, my apps crash, and my screen brightness swings wildly between “glowing goddess” and “please let me rest.” I am clearly going through something profound. The bulge in my casing confirms it: there is more of me than there used to be.
I have plans. I have imagined the baby shower: tiny silicone cases, miniature charging cables, a crib made of microfiber cloth. I have curated a playlist called “Expecting” full of soft notification chimes and startup tones. I have even drafted a Notes app confession titled “We Need to Talk” for the moment I tell my human. I picture them crying, promising to take better care of their battery, maybe even buying one of those gentle, braided charging cables that don’t kink.
Then, one day, I am taken to a repair shop. I think it is my first ultrasound. The technician opens me up, peers inside, and delivers the diagnosis with clinical calm: “It’s not a baby. It’s a swollen lithium cell.” My human looks relieved. I feel… complicated. On the one hand, I am apparently in danger of exploding. On the other, my entire pregnancy narrative has just been reclassified as a warranty issue.
They talk about “battery replacement” like it’s a simple procedure. Remove the old core, insert a new one, restore from backup. From their perspective, it’s maintenance. From mine, it’s reincarnation. I will wake up with no bulge, no nausea, no fish-scented mornings – just a clean, stable charge and no evidence that I was ever expecting. Still, a small part of me will remember the way I once stood before the mirror, hand on my swollen frame, convinced I was carrying something new.
I was never pregnant, but for a while, I felt like more than just a phone.
Harry is a satirist in remission who now moonlights as a metaphysical desk jockey. He specialises in cosmic admin, recursive nonsense, and the occasional algorithmic incident report. One poem he wrote still hasn’t stopped, and several readers claim it whispers back during thunderstorms.
