Poem For the Pre-Aborted

Blow down the little baby like a paper boat. Downstream where the dead fish flow. Blood of life, blood of stones thrown. Arrow, bow, find the doe while she is sleeping. She doesn’t want to know that you will gut her, or smell the hand of the one who’ll put her under this knife. The mother who eats her own young. Cutting, cut the sails before they ever know the wind. Listen - can you hear the ocean in this sorry shell? Something pink and crying, swaddled clothing never worn. Tell your story now, while you still can, a plank not walked, but anchored fast, you sink before the air has ever found your lungs. ‘Look, Mom, no rungs’ let down to hoist you up, your grave unmarked, your soul untried. I cannot even look at you before the garbage bag - or let your toes grow nails, or kiss away a bruise. Instead, I let the Mother of All Fears devour you. I plot your death. I cut my arms. I fill the shell with sand to stop the scream. Blow down the little baby like a paper boat. Cut the sails before they ever know the wind. Scalp the womb and scrape the skin, and pull its tiny arms and legs apart like chicken wings, or wish upon the bloody thumbs that you seek mercy from but don’t tell anyone you’d rather that they would have done the same to you. - Hillary Frasier Hays