even as my thoughts 
float 
like
uneaten fish food flakes 
in a dirty goldfish bowl
I swim bloatedly,
serving rolls
to mothers who spread them with butter,
and hand them
absentmindedly 
to toddlers in high chairs.
They ask me when I am due.
I go about smiling 
weakly
and wonder…
did this mother
wonder
about dying too?
Was she overwhelmed
with protesters
offering unbearable choices,
demanding she consider
unthinkable options–
assuring her that no one
would come out of this alive
as poor as she was
as young as she was
something was going to have to die.
“You have your whole life ahead of you..”
As though she had no right to let a baby be part of it.
As though someone had to die.
Her.
Her baby.
As though they were separate things
as though her pregancy wasn’t part of her…
as though killing 
the part of her 
that made her
 a jelly Bellie swellie mama
was as easy as ordering a piece of pie
( although this is written in first person this is not something which I personally have gone through. It is written for the women I’ve known who have been told they didn’t have the right to be … mothers)