Excerpt from the poem “Aftercare”

…My mother usually sleeps
on the couch, one ear
awaiting my safe arrival. But tonight,
she is again grasping
to cradle me, chipping
at my depression
nest of clothes atop my bed—folding,
sorting, lifting a weight I felt unspeakable, where
she finds, tucked beneath
my pillows, the coral cardstock
abortion aftercare packet. I hear
her fingers unstick from pages
with a sweat that does not reach
her eyes. She hugs me tighter and I am
a heavy numbness. She says, I could
have driven you…

**

This poem is about a very quiet, brief moment that ended up being a large turning point in my relationship with my mother. I was in college, needed and got an abortion, and did not tell my mom about it. In this poem, I wanted to explore how loving and being loved is a process of letting other people surprise you (among other things, I initially did not tell my mom about my procedure because I assumed she’d be against it, as a staunch Catholic). I felt the auto-loaded jabs my teenage self loaded up in the back of my mind melt away, and suddenly there I was, being hugged by my mom, and I was too in shock at the time to really return it.

My favorite thing in poems is a really good volta, or turn. The poem “Feet” by Ross Gay is a great example of this! I also like to see poems overall as doorways to larger conversations. I know that I was lucky to have access to an abortion at 20 years old with little fuss. I live in a large city in the US with accessible abortion clinics, and had a pool of savings to pull from, as well as a partner to split the cost with. I think a lot about where I would be now had things gone differently, and how a lot of other people are in that exact situation today—especially now with how dire things are regarding abortion rights. I hope this poem can hopefully lead to a call to action, as well.