The Scar
(Disclaimer--I usually don't do content warnings, but this is part of my Reproductive Justice Cycle, and this is maybe more...fraught than most. Surgical images, implied rape.)
Between each hip
the scar runs
crosswise
beneath the navel,
an abdomen bisected
by the blade
to take out
so many pounds of flesh;
as once flesh itself
cut her
below the navel,
her life
bisected
to idly insert
new life within.
Those who never saw
nature's bloody claw
will never see that scar,
for the modesty we give
children
will leave it, for them,
veiled in a mystery.
But those who know
that bite and scratch living
and the pain that throbs in
the vital thrust
that drives the arteries and
the veins and muscular torsion
of all our mammal descent into
life know
this reminder will always stay.
This is the nature of such scars.
One beneath the navel
to go with the half-remembered
cut between the legs.
The incision where
a decision was made
for her
because her body
was too small to protest
and too small to comply.
This reminder will always be
a line to the first
brutal time, and every
brutal time confronted
with the link
her body helplessly
formed in a fear made flesh
and brought into this world
with the violence
doubled.
A connection to that man.
To his rights.
A gift to him
of fatherhood
unwillingly given
from her who was
called his
sometime child?
And as for well-wishes
and congratulations?
I wish those who made this happen
also wear a scar
being far more culpable for all
that transpired,
dear child,
than you are.
These children,
mother and child--
neither to be shamed
but in no argument
where "consequence"
is spoken of
can it be separated from
the moral frame.
That she "must" suffer
the curse of Eve--
her child,
(although one hopes not)
a mark of Cain.
I could wish you both a better world than this--
this one is always less than safe,
and has a logic worse than sane.