by Julia Coleman
I once had a child sucked from my womb
Doctors and other such notables
with not a womb among them
fixed me properly and I never spoke of
nor cared to remember much
that small bunch of cells
though I was divided
from the others alike
who it seemed never stood upright again
and bleated, bleated
but I was not of that flock
as I washed the blood from my hands, my blood
and went about my business.
And some young, dumb white boy
with his mothers unworked hands
that never saw no blood
stayed free of me and my clump of cells
chose to spend his days outside some clinic in upstate New York
carrying his board with its ripe and bloody warning
in memory of those cells.
He chanted those words
with a passion he had never shown to me
“Choose life, Choose life”
He could not know it, but I already did.
Years later I met a sassy flap-mouth woman gone to fat
who had on her a pair of spectacles black rimmed
and talked about procedure and the anguish she expected still
and how a club of one is such a lonely place to live
when you choose life.
Still later a woman told me how a knife was put through her
times five by a man mad to show her he’s her boss and how
she fights him in the street and goes down once and gets up again
and runs and lifts the knocker on a door when under her bloody chin
the knife comes again and the knock is never heard.
In the photographs the cop points to her bloody handprint in the brick
and when she wakes up in the hospital
the faces and the voices are real sorry
this was a terrible thing this trying to kill you business
but she is up and awake and smiling
and she thinks they crazy for being sad.
They don’t know
she chose life.