Headline Poetry & Press

Roe v. Wade-related

This is strangely annoying.
when you see arrogance in
someone who doesn’t own a thing
Can’t conjure a thing out of thin air
let alone a human being.

You are just the renter here. You don’t own shit.
you are born from this womb
which cradles your existence for months
a sliver away from called a being

Nothing but a pulsating existence in a foreign body
Sometimes the body treats it like an infection
to keep away the contamination
self-purging, an act of reclamation

Sometimes it accepts
cups its own palm
supports you, carries it to term
Its the body,
the arrangement
the unsaid understanding
a solemn promise
between the body and its identity

Your existence is slowly molded
like a ball of sagging clay on the potter wheel
morphed and molded
to be called a human being

You don’t own the womb.
You definitely don’t own our bodies.
You break the arrangement
just like to possess the things

Let me clear this
for the sake of your understanding
the body is not for your taking
There is a thin line between
The choices we make and your wanting.

Image: Malta’s prehistoric statues and sexuality

First Published in the War Cry from the Uterus