Choice

By Erica Goss

I’m sixteen. School
thinks I have the flu. I tell
the doctor to
knock me out. In
the alley behind the clinic, men
wait in cars.
They leave their
engines rumbling. Backseat
speakers vibrate.
My mother drives
me home.
I’m thirty-seven. Work
thinks I
had a miscarriage. I tell
the doctor to knock
me out.  At the
hospital gift shop I buy
myself a bouquet of roses.
Classic rock plays
from the radio. My
husband drives me
home. I am not
sorry. I am not
ashamed. I saved one
from a teen-aged
mother. I saved the other
from her damaged body. There’s no
music for that. No
songs.

A brief bio: Erica Goss is the winner of the 2019 Zocalo Poetry Prize. Her collection, Night Court, won the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Recent and upcoming publications include Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Spillway, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and Critical Read. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, from 2013-2016. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches, writes and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.

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