I waited in my nausea,
Surrounded by stone-faced bourgeois
With rolls of twenty-dollar bills
In jacket pockets with their pills,
Funds from the ATM outside
The clinic door, because the guide,
Imbedded in the website said
“Cash only in advance.” The dread
Concealed — as if I really read
The Mademoiselle — my eyes instead
Were staring at the vinyl floor,
So clean and cold, a wise decor
In case a mother’s vomit soiled
The luster underfoot, and spoiled
This sterile place.

And then, all through
The brief and mindless interview
And prep, they called my baby “it.”
I tried to think that what God knit
In me was only “it.” I gripped
For dear life every word — a script
To somehow make this life an “it.”

But then, with legs still split
In clamps, I lifted up my head,
And saw there on the table, dead,
A tiny torso, not an “it,” but “she,”
Destroyed, and with her, me.