How can you prove something didn't happen
when the only witness is you?

When you’re the one curled up on the hexagoned floor
watching the blood seep through

the cotton weave of your favourite skirt
the one that caressed the slight mound

of your stomach, the one you’d hidden
for all those years, flattening it with

girdle pants to be just like the girls
with concave femininity, the ones

who glanced sideways at your tree trunk thighs
sneering as they passed you by

tree trunk thighs with muscles of water
as you scrabble around on the bathroom floor

scooping up blood rivulets in shaking fingers
drawing faces in the most intimate places

imagining eyes of an unavailable daughter
laughter of a boy running towards you

and your arms ache, your stomach burns
your heart expands and the lesson you learn

as your defective womb leaks all over the floor
is: this isn’t for you, it’s too late and too soon

for the world to welcome another like you

Over at dVerse Open Link Night, we are invited by our congenial host Grace to share a poem in response to the prompt she has set, or something else entirely. This week, I have decided to go for something else.

If you would like to take part and also have the opportunity to read other poets’ work, please click on the link, read the post and dive on in!

(Image by Jean Marc Pampuch at Pexels).