I want to talk to you—Alito,
Barrett, Gorsuch,
Kavanaugh, Roberts, Thomas—
tell you how
I woke that day to vanished
morning sickness
and—at the doctor’s office—how the lights
and ceiling tiles
hovered over the exam,
the absent heartbeat,
the soothing words—At ten weeks, nature
might make this
simple, but call if you need me.
I want you to know
I was young—I stopped for ice cream,
something sweet
to take home to my husband
and our napping son.
Please understand—the pain waited
for midnight
to churn, the spilling, fierce—
on the bathroom floor,
the kitchen rug, in the car, in the maze
of Emergency—
and how I shivered—my body
cold, teeth clattering,
my doctor—rushing in, out—shouting for
an operating room.
If it happened now, a hospital could
turn me away—doctors
afraid of arrest—bans insisting on delay,
on risking sepsis,
infertility. Listen! I was blessed
with a second child—
born decades ago—a different time, as if
a different country.
—
Christine Rhein is the author of Wild Flight (Walt McDonald Poetry Prize, Texas Tech University Press). Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review and Rattle, and have been selected for Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology.
