that feeling you get

that feeling you get when you're on your knees listening to your joints crack as you repeatedly start punching the ground as hard as you can until the earth's skull cracks open reaching the core to bathe your skeleton in molten iron, while bringing upon the last mass extinction on the planet, but failing, always failing; collapsing on your back in gravel, rocks, mulch, grass, ripped up cellophane wrappers, flatten fast food cups, used syringes, cigarette butts, regrets, and bad feelings, next to a stump from a tree that was recently cut down by men with chainsaws outside your apartment building (spine resting on the roots and what remains of the trunk) with broken arms, fractured wrists, and busted fingers sharp fragments of bone sticking through like broken twigs, realizing you haven't even made an impression in the dirt because you are weak and a failure by choice, not luck or circumstance, that never accomplishes your goals, improves your life, and/or achieves your dreams in life in any way because you're lazy, unmotivated, with no self-belief because what evidence is there to believe in yourself since there is always someone who exists in the world that is better than you at what you’re supposed to be good at, so you always have to open your eyes in the morning to do the same monotonous shit every day that you settled for because you are alive and left with a choice to accept it, and die with the passage of time at some random moment because of something you can’t prevent or predict, feeling the same as you always have, and disappointing more people you care about for longer than you already have, ruining their lives more, or you look up the chainsaw men who just cut down the tree by your apartment building in the yellow pages stacked outside your building’s front door, because you can't afford internet or a smart phone, and don’t have the gas or bus money to get to a wi-fi hotspot or library, so you hire them to do the same to your body that they did to the tree: slicing you into smaller and smaller pieces with gas powered tools that have a use/purpose, then having the workers put whatever big remains are left through a woodchipper becoming nutrition for other forms of life that will soon become infected with your shitty thoughts and outlook on life, according to the people who understand what’s wrong with you and the world, which you’ve never been able to figure out yourself since the day you were born, until nothing remains.

prematurely giving birth behind bars while witnessing something that has never been seen before (This Could Lead to Divorce)

My bra feels like a piano wire.

Tangling around a neck.

Becoming taught.

Rubbing jugular skin raw.

It feels like I’m starting to hallucinate:

Your eyes are onions

And I’m pulling thin translucent rings

Out of your pupils

Because I hate the taste

And the smell .

That’s why I got all teary eyed

When I threw them in the garbage

*

The water broke. And he put me in handcuffs. Tightening  them way too tight. And carefully shoved me into the backseat of the car.

An amalgamation of fluids

Churning

Rustling back and forth

Against my belly button

Feels like indigestion

And I’ve taken recommended dosage of antacids

For a woman of my size

But it’s not helping.

And there’s no stopping it now:

PAIN.

“That’s it push!”

Latex gloves molesting my expanding vagina.

PAIN.

Relief?

PAIN.

Life.

I vomit out a fully formed child covered in a viscous film of half digested mash potatoes, shreds of buffalo chicken, specks of lettuce, and pieces of my personality saturated in stomach acid.

You smile behind your handheld video camera. Documenting every moment as carefully as an anthropologist in an unexplored region of the world.  Not missing a millisecond. Not paying attention. And you never held my hand or helped me breath.

“THIS HAS TO BE SOME KIND OF WORLD RECORD! WOW! AND I GOT IT ALL ON TAPE! THIS IS GOING TO BE AN INTERNET SENSATION FOR SURE!”

The doctor tries to hand him a sterile pair of scissors, but he was uploading the video on his smart phone. I grab the scalpel on the tray next to my bed and slice through the umbilical cord like it was a piece of paper.

PAIN.

“I still can’t believe I fucking got that on tape. What a fucking miracle. Right?”

The doctor tilts his grey hair down and exclaims, “Congratulations, it’s a girl.”

I readjust my body so that my back is representing my place in the conversation. It was terror twilight and rain was lapping against the pane of the hospital window before it dropped to the pavement below.

He inches closer to the doctor, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I mean, have you ever seen or heard of anything happening like that in your entire life?”

“No.”

“So this is the first documented case?”

“Yes.”

He rubs the outside his index finger over the scrubble on his chin. BINGO!

“You know this is going to make all of us fucking rich. Rich and famous! The rest of our lives our set my friend.”

He, the doctors, and the nurses, joined hands and began dancing and jumping up and down because they just won the lottery.

They put my baby in a plastic box, and left it as is because they couldn’t tamper with the evidence. It can’t be contaminated.

My husband posts the video on the internet, and it receives 50,000 views in the first three hours.

The best doctors from around the world are flying in on their private planes in order to study this strange reproductive phenomenon.

I think about the future: hours of medical tests and studies, syndicate talk shows, movie documentaries, parenthood, control, responsibilities, PTA meetings, and where I fit into all of this.

It was all his idea. And so far, he’s only touched his daughter through the movie screen.

“We are RICH! HONEY! RICH! RICH! RICH! No more office job. I can finally get whatever I want. And so could you!”

I peek over at our daughter motionless in the hodge-podge of fluids it was birthed in.

She isn’t crying, yet.

But I am, because I never wanted her.  And I never wanted to get rich. I wanted an abortion.

“I’m sorry, but she will be a carrot for the rest of her life,” the doctor said popping the cork off a champagne bottle. Foam raining down the plastic sides of the life support machine.

They go outside, imagining sports cars, awards, recognition, gold teeth, television specials, private jets, stacks of benjamins, and the American dream coming true in 2012.

Distracted.

I quietly sulk out of the bed in my hospital gown, and tiptoe over the linoleum, leaving footprints of DNA for forensic investigators to discover and collect later.

I look at my daughter. My baby carrot.

I love her, but she doesn’t deserve this:

I pick her up and cradle her close to my breast, swaying back and forth, humming a soft lullaby into her orange ear. 

I pop her into my mouth with a little bit of ranch, swallow and choke.

I will choke on her for the rest of my life.

*

Here’s some advice:

1. You’re life is not important because you get married. (The divorce rate in America is over 50%.)

2. You’re life is not important because you have the ability to reproduce.

3. You’re life is not important because you raise children.

4. You’re in jail, along with me. Life sentence.

5. And overpopulation is the number one problem in the world.

*

The jovial smell of jubilation masks the smell of bodily fluids drifting off the dirty linens in the hospital room. I bury my head in the pillow to escape the smell, and start tunneling through the center with a homemade tool made out of five scalpels and an ice cream scooper searching for daylight.

23 and not pregnant

Running my fingertips

Over the flat contours

Of my stomach,

I realize that I can sell the rest of my eggs

To a charity.

They could be used to feed the homeless.

They could hatch.

They could be made into the best omelet anyone has ever had ever.

They could be smashed into the side of a house on mischief night

Pink and red yolk oozing down the tawny siding.

I would use the money to pay off student loans.

I would use the money to go to the movies with someone on a date because I can afford it.

I would use the money to sleep in.

I would use the money to realize that there really are different land masses on the other sides of the oceans.

I would use the money to sharpen my canines so I can puncture skin with ease.

Cause I’m fucking wild, man.

But not wild enough to get on reality tv.