A lightning strike
and the balance of injustice tilted
unjustly, millions of lives
hemmed into the pants of just a few.
A fog lifted then resumed, then lifted again,
as if he could simply sit back
and watch his girlfriend bleed
in an urgent care center.
Transferred by ambulance,
she learns her baby has gone ectopic–
best pray hard as her tube bursts,
and fever strikes,
believing God plays any part
in this. I’ve sense enough
to have been born a gay man,
but I have a daughter
and I come from a long line
of uteruses. The crusades
have not finished
for those they deem sinful,
as if separation of church
and state is just a dotted line.
The woman mourns a child
some would still have expected
her to carry, a clump of dead tissue,
until her body expelled it,
or she died of sepsis, such things,
as they are, God’s will.
On the TV in the lobby
as they wheel her outside,
a right-wing pundit point out
that mothers are having babies
with no money to raise them,
as if the same government
that held her in the palm of its hand
and watched her dilate,
now expected her
to do anything other than suffer.