Laurin Becker Macios: “Abortion Poem”

ABORTION POEM

               If a bird landed in my palm

               I could either crush it
               or set it free. –Nick Flynn

For a while I thought of it
like that. It: the hand and
its decision to crush;
the crushed, gone swift
as a finch; the sense of
my life my own.

Sometimes I becomes you.
Pronouns are as shifty as sperm,
as full of potential, and the possibility
of being wrong.

The sun, unmoving, crushes
and blinks new each small thing.
It draws out a tulip. Blisters
our skin. Might we worship it
for the sense it makes, raising
palms to a predictable god?