On the Eve of My
Abortion
there is a loudness
that fills me with silence
a blanket of white-sound
a roaring storm the size of a
pinprick
muted lips, lashless eyes
I hold my breath
at the telling of this taboo
on the eve of my abortion
I become a woman of stone
who spouts tears of stone
and is insular in her sadness
I write one and then two
poems, birthing ideas
recreating me in the image
of the written word,
pulling a rib from thin air
on the eve of such a day
I am closeted, a secret thing
buried beneath a pile of clothes
I do not feel the fabric against
my skin
I must become sinless
though I know there is no such
thing as sin
I have not bled in weeks
and I never knew I could
miss with such an aching
need that thing I often bemoan,
the stigmata of femininity
Today I ate a simple lunch
at a simple diner while
making pleasant conversation
the waitress, young and vital
her eyes were old and rimmed
with worry
she spoke with a smile
the daily special,
the tepid soup
the niceties ?
that Spring had finally,
finally arrived
I wondered if she had ever
done what I was about to do
and bit down the urge
to ask her, plain-spoken and
woman-to-woman
the blood bloomed
to top of my tongue and
and the words were
silent thorns in my mouth
she moved on
I sat with my skin
until the
sun went down
on the night before my abortion
I am made of two bodies
a fractured arm like a white
wing,
a black swan, glossy and
swimming
inside the pool of myself
I can feel the blood
pumping through the lace and
lattice,
the visceral veins, primordial
the way I was intended to be
On the eve of my abortion
it is raining inside of me
there is a great cloud
moving above the reflection
of a placid lake
I am a basin
about to fill
over
something sighs and breaks
but it isn’t me
the size of a thumbnail
shifts like a fault line
all of my mother’s saints
call out to me this evening
a bitter twilight martyred by
the sun
Santa Teresa, the blessed
venerable one
Our Virgin Mother, virgincita
morena
Virgin de Guadalupe
I am still in my body
as a stampede of dark horses
run across the valley of my
breasts,
creates the faintest ripple
of thunder
all the metaphors in the world
cannot save me from this poem
the office will be a blinding
white,
the sheets spotlessly clean and
my thighs
spread, cold at the touch of
metal
this is not an offering, but a
taking of ?
the certitude of a mind made up
the resolution of my own verdict
I will maybe think of my other
daughter
who sleeps now restfully in her
bed,
one arm curled beneath her like
a small wing,
I will maybe think of the
waitress who
seemed to burst with newness
at the thought of Spring’s
arrival,
I will maybe think of the poems
I build one brick at a time,
the wistful need to bare fruit
still dogged,
decisions run
through my veins
thick as ice
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