To the Oklahoma Lawmakers
Who Passed SB 1878 Requiring an Ultrasound Prior to An Abortion
Why don’t you print out the ultrasound pictures
and pastel frame them? Make me take them home
and hang them on my wall as a souvenir of the night
that is branded like red coals to flesh on my memory.
The night when his hand pressed so hard on my
shoulder, I felt more intimacy with the asphalt.
Why don’t you knit the baby a sweater? Make me take
it out and smell it on the anniversary of this day for the
rest of my life to remind me I chose to be a murderer
instead of bringing a child into this world where we kill
people in the name of freedom, but imprison people
in the name of life.
You could make laws for that too, you know. It’s bad enough
that I can still see his handprint on my thigh but now I can
see your probing eye, scraping across my cervix, tattooing
my womb with shame. Why don’t you send me a card every
Mother’s Day to remind me of how wretched I am. Sign it,
Your friends at the State Capitol, making sure you know we
actually do something all day with your tax dollars. Look,
I know it can get boring. Between the Porker’s
Association breakfast and the Oil and Gas Industry lunch.
And I know you need something to do between cutting
funding for the arts and passing off your racism as an
immigration bill, but I need a little more from you than
a piece of paper.
If you really want to show me that you believe in
“Faith, Family and Freedom.” then why don’t you
come along for the ride. I could have used you
that night. After the football game. Me, grasping
for acceptance. Him, finally showing me attention.
Tell me I’m special, so when he hands me the next drink
I don’t look to the bottom of it for approval. Tell me to
scream louder so someone might find us. Wrap me
in a blanket when he’s done, take me home, my body
a tapped keg, my heart the grimy gym floor after
the pep rally. Give me the words to say to my parents
when I come out of the bathroom with a plus sign on
the stick and he won’t even talk to me.
The school hallway is a canyon. Silence echoes in my skull
I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do. Sit with me
at the clinic, filling out twenty pages of questions.
Make me listen to the heartbeat.
Give me the revelation that the blip on the screen
is actually a baby. Take me home when I change my mind.
Take me to the doctor every month, hold my hand in
the delivery room. I will name him after you
if you will help me do my homework when he’s
crying in the next room. Give me food stamps,
pay my gas bills. Put him in an after-school program
where he learns he can sell my pain pills.
Have mercy on him when he goes to court.
Give me strength when they sentence him.
If you want to play God, Mr. and Mrs. Lawmakers,
if you want to write your Bible on my organs,
then you better be there when I am down
on my knees pleading for relief
from your morality.