release as holding cell
coffee mornings with other mums from school
as holding cell
imagine a secret we all have secrets says Laraine who talks
openly about her divorce body like an early text
discarded Gina is a Christian who believes in love
but someone has to speak up for the babies imagine
the taste
of twenty-five hand-iced fairy cakes my vagina as fairy cake
Tinkerbell my mother called it hundreds and thousands what if
I said it
there is an abortion counter online tick tick tick what if
I said I watch it I’m not asking you to answer Jesus
don’t you know anything about the rhetorical what if you couldn’t
what if you had to what if you wanted to think liberation
think feminism I am bleeding into my office chair
soaking occurs post trauma
can you really say you’re intimate with someone if you don’t know
what they look like in the company of death back to the fairy cakes
you wish this was sexier if you want a ghost
to leave you alone become as insignificant as a grey stone
jump hit your heels against your tail bone a controlled fall
into a hot bath the frog was covered with a white cheesecloth
then put inside my mouth hold it there until it dies they said
how will I know
you will feel its heart thumping between your lips when it stops you
will know you have been cured
I left the clinic
a brick of padding between my legs
I left my body
to the grey stone steps
became a way in
and a way out
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