An excellent piece in Mother Jones on the 39th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade brought to mind my own memories of growing up in the silence around even the word “abortion.” This poem was first published in CALYX.

ANOTHER STORY ABOUT LOVE

I tell him about

the story in my mother’s letter:

a girl I knew last year in high school

dead, a botched abortion,

septicemia,

the police phoning her parents,

saying Come and get your kid.

First time I’d heard the word

abortion.

I ask him what it means, hear

the silence around it,

his silence as we walk by the river

late at night

near his dorm room

rank with beer bottles

and dirty socks,

where Eartha Kitt sang for us

Birds do it, bees do it…

A wooden bench,

the slop, slop of the river.

His hand explores my thigh.

My leg closes against him,

saying no,

I don’t want to die,

not yet.

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