Little white stick,
I didn’t plan to be back
here again,
removing the blue cap to hold you
in a wash of hot urine,
then watch the clock—
breath held,
heart thrumming,
telling no one—
afraid and alone in a bathroom
like so many women before me,
not even knowing
the right to choose was about to
vanish like smoke.

Numbing fear of almost bleeding
to death again,
almost swelling and seizing
to death again.
I barely made it through that birthing;
in times past, my children would have
grown up motherless
in America,
red again
like lifeblood
gushing between the legs, scarlet robe
of control around a woman’s body,
but this body is
mine.

These false crusaders will keep trying
to govern us into graves,
but we are not like our
grandmothers;
we have had a taste
of choosing for ourselves and
we are hungry for it now.