Wednesday, July 11, 2007

havoc

she sits straight up in bed,
never got to lying, back stiff
and aching.
her stomach twists,
and wrenches
quarter-sized pieces of flesh
from her insides.

soon she will need to walk downstairs, staggering
to the bathroom to crouch
over the toilet and watch
the slow hemorrhage of chunks,
staining the water ghastly pink,
a waterfall
of red stains
on the white porcelain sides.

it wasn't a baby now,
hadn't ever been, wasn't even
a concept
until the bleeding came,
in the middle
of the cycle, all wrong.

her lover watches her body eject
the foreign material,
something that never was, and
tries to argue:
must be side-effects from her new birth control,
anything
but the reality of the word miscarriage,
which must, by nature,
imply first
the fact of pregnancy.
the fact that his gentle, sinuous body
has wreaked violence upon hers.
he sleeps beside her rigid form, right hand
curled around her ankle.
the ache shifts, lowers.
she breathes slowly, and,
untangling his hand, steps one foot
toward the staircase.

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