“MURDERER"

index fingers besiege her, pointed

to her eyebrows creased with months

that somehow rounded

into her taut

stomach

she remembers how her friends reacted

they took one downward

glance

and took off, just how she

snapped the double-lined drugstore 

test into the murky water

and flushed 

seventy-three 

times

the wax paper

she crinkled up into fists congested

the toilet bowl to its

brim and for a moment her

inflation found its

match

I’m too young, I’m too young, God please

she hurled herself against the stall door

and almost felt each trimester

trickle down her

thigh

and plunged the bottom of 

her torn up sandal on the lever

there was only words that

gave her the courage to exit the women’s

bathroom, readjust her hair, lather soap

in the hand that was

hers

the diaphragm, a witness to all

vomited a shriek as she

took one glance at the headline years

later 

her mother called soon after to mourn 

with the woman widowed from her body

in the crossroads of those unwilling to

divorce themselves from 

arms

if only the black-robed justices could

picture, for one brief moment when the nitrile

gloves extracted the fetus was life not

emptied but

began