bodily autonomy – Writers Resist

Choices

By Alice Benson

“Watch me, Gram,” Tammy yelled, waving her arms and leaping into the air.

Janet smiled, watching her granddaughter bounce on the trampolines. At ten years old, Tammy was athletic and graceful and loved nothing more than playing physically active games.

Janet took out her phone, set it on record, and tried to catch Tammy’s graceful arcs. What a lovely girl. Then Janet snapped a few photos and sent one to her son to show him how happy Tammy was.

Because Richard had tried to stop her from being with Tammy. He almost hadn’t allowed them to see each other. She remembered their hard conversation.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for Tammy to spend time with you.” His mouth was set in a firm line, but his eyes looked sad. “You hold a lot of beliefs that will have a harmful effect on her life.”

“I don’t.” Janet was adamant. “I only want good things for Tammy.”

“You support our current president. He’s building a horrible culture for girls.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Janet’s frustration rose. Even as a little boy, Richard had been too serious for his own good. “I’m not crazy about everything he says or does, but he doesn’t mean all that stuff. He’s like a performer. You just have to ignore the parts you don’t like. He’ll bring inflation down. I can barely afford to buy groceries anymore.”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t believe he’ll bring down prices, but even if I did, I wouldn’t trade cheaper bread for my daughter’s safety.”

“I’m not doing anything to hurt Tammy. You worry too much; you always did. Your daughter will be fine. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.” Janet was positive she was speaking the truth. “The only ones who have anything to worry about are the criminals. He’ll take care of them.”

“Mom, he bragged about assaulting women. Those were his actual words. He was recorded.”

“That was just locker room talk. All men joke around like that.”

“I don’t joke around like that.” Richard paused. “Would you like it if someone grabbed Tammy?”

“Don’t be silly. You know how the other side likes to exaggerate. They’re always picking on him and making stuff up. It’s not fair for you to keep my only granddaughter from me because you and I don’t agree on politics.”

“This is so much more than politics,” Richard said. “This is about supporting someone who is actively working to make the world less safe for your granddaughter.” Richard’s voice rose and he stopped. His eyes closed briefly. “Have you listened to any of his supporters—all those young men who say such hateful things? They want total control over women, including women’s bodies.”

“He can’t help what people say.”

“Mom, he encourages them. He repeats their disgusting words, and it’s all over the internet. People talking like that puts Tammy in danger.”

As usual, Richard was getting upset over nothing. Janet blinked back tears; she just wanted to have a nice time with her granddaughter, but this conversation was hurtful for both her and Richard.

Two days later, Richard called to relent. “Tammy really wants to see you, Mom. She misses you. But don’t say anything about politics. I mean it, nothing at all.”

Janet agreed, just happy to spend time with her girl. They went to lunch at Perkins, Tammy’s favorite restaurant, because she could get hashbrowns made just the way she liked. They went shopping, and Janet bought her a new dress and some cozy pajamas. Their last stop was Adventureland, an indoor trampoline and play park, where Tammy could run and jump to her heart’s content.

“Let’s go over here, Gram.”

Janet followed Tammy and watched as she went into an area enclosed by nets hanging from the ceiling. The trampolines were about a foot off the ground, with kids jumping on either side, tossing balls at each other. “Gotcha,” Tammy yelled as she picked up a ball and threw it at a boy, hitting him in the chest. He caught it, laughed, and turning full circle, took aim at someone else.

Janet recognized the game was dodgeball, but the kids were bounding, shouting, and throwing balls at each other in a generally chaotic way.

One bigger kid, he looked to be about fifteen, started throwing harder, appearing to aim for people’s heads and faces. Then he walked over to a smaller boy and just grabbed the ball out of his hands.

“Hey,” Tammy shouted. “Stop that.”

Tammy was a strong believer in fairness and kindness, and she always stood up for the underdog. Janet admired that, but she mostly wished that Tammy would just mind her own business and look the other way. That’s what Janet did.

The bigger kid turned, dropped the little kid’s ball, walked over to Tammy and snatched her ball out of her hands.

“Give that back,” Tammy yelled.

Janet was about to call Tammy out of the play area, when the boy turned and grinned. “You’ll get this back when I say. Haven’t you heard? It’s your body, my choice.” He drew his arm back and hurled the ball, hitting Tammy full in the face. She stumbled and fell backwards.

Janet ran over and knelt beside her. Tammy sat up, tears running down her face, and Janet pulled her into a hug. “Are you okay?”

After a moment, Janet could feel Tammy’s head nod against her chest. “I’m all right. I just lost my balance. It didn’t hurt that much, but what a mean boy.”

“Yes, he is.” Janet looked around, but the kid was gone. The other children were focused on their own games.

“I’m ready to leave.” Tammy stood and walked out of the dodgeball area.

Janet followed close behind. “How about some ice cream before I take you home?”

“No thanks, Gram. I just want to get going.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” A prickle of anxiety poked at Janet. It wasn’t like Tammy to turn down sweet treats.

Tammy nodded, but she paused. “I guess ice cream would be all right.”

They walked over to the refreshment stand, got two chocolate cones, and found an unoccupied table.

“That boy said he got to make choices about my body,” Tammy said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Janet took a small bite of ice cream and shivered. She was hoping that Tammy hadn’t understood what that stupid kid said.

“My mom and dad always say that no one can touch me without my permission.” Tammy gazed at Janet. “Isn’t that true?”

“Of course, it’s true.” Janet’s stomach twisted with discomfort. She wanted Tammy to stop talking about this whole subject. What was the point?

“Then why did that boy say he could do what he wanted with my body?”

“I don’t know.” But Janet was lying, and for the first time in many years, she wondered if maybe her son wasn’t overreacting.

The chocolate suddenly scorched her tongue and became pure bitterness in her mouth.

Alice Benson (she/her) lives in Wisconsin with her wife and their dog. She recently retired from a job in a human services field; previously she spent over thirteen years working with a domestic violence program. Her short work has appeared in a variety of publications. Both Alice’s novels, Her Life is Showing and A Year in Her Life were published by Black Rose Writing. She wrote a middle-grade novel with her granddaughter, Trapped in a Tablet, which was published in May 2025 by Watchful Wizard Press. For more information, visit Alice’s website.

Photo credit: Rita Hogan via a Creative Commons license.

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Incubator

By Bethany Bruno

You were twenty-four
when your brain went silent.
No dreams.
No waking.

But still they kept you warm
beneath the weight of wires,
your skin bathed in fluorescent blue,
your breath machine-fed.

Not for you.
For the small, curled possibility inside.
They called it life,
but what they meant was labor.

They turned your body
into a hushed room
without windows,
without voice.

A vessel.
A holding cell.
Your name was Adriana.
Say it aloud.
Adriana Smith.

Not “the mother.”
Not “the miracle.”
Not “the body.”

A woman.
A daughter.
Gone.

One pound, they said.
A child barely bigger than a fist,
lungs like damp paper,
skin still translucent.

And yet they carved her out of you
as if hope could be harvested
from a still-warm grave.

Only a flatline,
a hum in the room,
the smell of bleach and latex
masking what was taken.

This is what they do.
They drape it in reverence.
Call it holy.

But watch how they hollow you.
Make a mother
from a body
already gone,
then dress it up
as a gift.

To the women watching,
this is the cost.

They are counting your worth
in ounces,
in gestational time,
in how long your heart can be coaxed to beat
after you have stopped being.

Stay alive long enough
and you, too,
can be used.

Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author whose writing echoes the language, history, and quiet beauty of her home state. Born in Hollywood and raised in Port St. Lucie, she earned a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has been featured in over sixty literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, The MacGuffin, and The Louisville Review. When she’s not writing or chasing down forgotten corners of history, Bethany enjoys laughter-filled moments with her husband and silly daughters. Visit www.bethanybrunowriter.com for more.

Photo of a baby incubator created by Tampa Joey via a Creative Commons license.

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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

Amendments

By Amy Cook

We hadn’t had a proper winter, but spring arrived anyway, confoundingly on time. Whatever you might have read about autumn in New York, the first morning the rows of tulips open on Park Avenue, or when the purple hyacinth spirals up through a neighborhood garden, or that cloudless April morning when the cherry trees first spill with the glut of blossom, those are the days I wish would linger. I turned forty-three in late March, right before the weather turned.

Filed: March 7, 2023. Florida Senate Bill 300, Pregnancy and Parenting Support: “prohibiting physicians from knowingly performing or inducing a termination of pregnancy after the gestational age of the fetus is determined to be more than 6 weeks, rather than 15 weeks.”

On the morning of Thursday, April 13, 2023, a week after it had been passed by the Florida Senate, the Florida House of Representatives took up the bill.

That day, in New York, the Central Park weather station measured a high of 90 degrees, breaking a record set in 1977. Old and potbellied men loitered by the Hudson River, shirtless, broiling. I took off my shoes and sipped greedily at a raspberry Arnold Palmer. The café at the pier is seasonal, but, like Brigadoon, miraculously opens on days that call people to the water.

At the river, I’m streaming the House of Representatives on my phone, and they race through nearly fifty amendments, all proposed by civil servants seeking to dull the law’s vicious scythe. Each amendment is allowed consideration for two and a half minutes.

“Will the sergeant secure the balcony please?”^[1]

It is certain the abortion ban will pass. The Florida House of Representatives has one hundred and ten voting members present on this day, and they will vote for the bill by a nearly two to one margin. Still, as is their right, ordinary Floridians have come to Tallahassee to protest the ban, which has exceptions for rape, incest, and human trafficking—provided you can prove it. With documentation.

I live in a building that is two blocks from the Hudson, less than a mile from Bethesda Fountain, and a mile and half from the reservoir. And still, I often feel parched. This particular Thursday, the water is desperately choppy, as if at war with the summer vibes the sun is trying to gift. A week from now, I will be lying in a hospital, a female radiologist swiping the ultrasound thingie (instrument? wand? scepter?) across my right breast where an unidentified mass waits to be named. The screen displays charcoal and ivory waves that undulate, tip and teeter. I stare at them, feeling sticky and warmed by the ultrasound gel. The radiologist gives me a cursory glance, every now and then.

“Black women and birthing people will be most affected by this abortion ban.”

We have become careful, of late, to say the things that go without saying, because it is worth it to have them said aloud. We waste time and capital sparring over the substitution of words, while the Slenderman creeps at the edge of the forest, leering at his prey. And prey are everywhere. My friend, who has six-year-old twin boys, recently asked them what their active shooter drills are like. They go to an elite private school that can afford security, and still, they prepare. Attention is paid.

The heat will last just a few days, before pulling us back, making us glad that we hadn’t installed the air conditioners just yet. I will still go down to the water to read and write, in the chill and mist, not wanting to be wasteful of the hours. Above me, vehicles fly up the Hudson River Parkway, heading out of town.

“Sergeant, will you secure the chamber and remove the gallery?”

It is impossible to tell how many protestors have filled the statehouse, but I can hear them being removed, one by one. Two days ago, an organization called Equality Florida issued a travel advisory, warning fellow Americans that Florida is no longer a safe place to be, especially if you are a person of color or queer or perhaps just unprepared to become the victim of random gun violence.

“Please [accept] this amendment so we don’t re-traumatize sexual assault victims.”

“I understand we’re banning books, so y’all might not have read all of that.”

“We are thinking of situations that have not been contemplated by this bill.”

Not a one of the amendments passes, of course. I play with my pink strappy sandals, on the ground, next to my chair. At some point this summer, I’ll get a pedicure, but today my feet are repulsive. My mind wanders. The amendment people are wasting their time, I think, and their breath. Going down with the ship. But history is filled with truth-tellers on the Titanic.

“This is a friendly amendment.”

“Read the next amendment!”

“Any . . . further outburst and the sergeant will remove you, and we can proceed with our business.”

When my youngest niece was born, just after midnight on August 12, 2021, she was almost two weeks late. Every day past her due date, I teased my brother that the baby was waiting for our late grandmother’s birthday; that Grandma Barbara was somehow orchestrating the delay. Hannah Rose was a perfectly average-sized newborn (indeed, born on the day that she now shares with a great-grandmother she never knew), but it stands to reason she wasn’t actually late. Rather, a physician had perhaps miscalculated how far along my sister-in-law actually was. It’s not an exact science.

So how do the doctors in Florida know when six weeks are up?

How do the legislators know?

Still, they prattle on. Behind me, a group of young women searches for a place to sit. Most of

the good spots are gone. It’s really very hot out.

“Have all members voted? Have all members voted?”

“We have a brief introduction and announcement from Representative Caruso.”

Between the amendments, Representative Caruso, who will actually vote “no” on the six-week abortion ban, takes the time to introduce a sergeant from the Delray Beach Police Department, who is visiting their chamber today. The officer had previously been convicted of a felony, for having stolen some money from a mall in Orlando. Governor DeSantis, who will sign this bill into law at 10:45 this evening, had pardoned the man, and now the officer is applauded as a “hometown hero.”

There will be six hours of debate, after all of the amendments go down in flames. None of it means a thing. The climb is too great, the gulf too wide. I put my sandals back on, and when I get up, the group of girls looking for a seat are pleased. They have frozen drinks in hand. I head to my apartment, where I will insist we wait for the next heat wave to install the air conditioning, but where I am still free.

“Please show that the amendment does not pass. Read the next amendment, please.”

^[1] Each quote in italics was spoken by a member of the Florida House of Representatives on April 13, 2023.

Amy Cook (she/they): MFA candidate, Rainier Writing Workshop, 2021 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Amy’s work has appeared in The Advocate, Queer Families: An LGBTQ+ True Stories Anthology and fifteen literary journals. Affiliations: BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop (Advanced), New York City Gay Men’s Chorus alum.

Photo credit: Rebecca Cruz via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems

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By Camille Lebel

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I choose
the boy who calls every night to discuss a million nothings, our voices hushing
when my mother picks up the line. Sitting behind me in history, watching footage
of the earth imploding, his finger traces the one-inch ribbon of skin exposed
between low-rise denim and a too-tight tee. That one feather touch infusing
recognition of the word, want.

Free
we stitch trust together with running words. We reject awkward Applebee’s dinners, school dances, roaring football games. We find ourselves on sun-soaked park benches, breathing being. We do not perform piety at Sunday morning services, seeking parental approval. From one another, we require no promises of forever to embrace the now.

Shameless
we make informed preparations. We walk the fluorescent-lit aisles of the corner pharmacy,
no repentant red-cheeked glow burning our faces. He asks for explicit consent again.
And again. The night I soak sorrows in Absolut oblivion is not the time. He knows
a lack of protest is not an invitation. Yes. is not always yes.

Vulnerable
when the time comes, we pretend no prowess. We ask questions and listen to answers.
Entwined fingers move together into uncertainty. We explore with intention the paths between flesh and bone. We laugh at frequent fumbles. Eyes bright, he looks at all I am.
I name my needs without hesitation. Less. More. No. Yes.

Gentle
is the joining. Not two falcons spiraling toward the earth, all adrenaline in panicked plummet.
More clematis exploring the garden arbor until deep violet abounds, boards and blooms reaching skyward to the sun. More steady drip of the leaky kitchen faucet. Soft beads
falling patient, steady, until the sink overflows.

Empowered
I have no regrets. My worth is neither the presence or absence of this. I do not pray
for absolution. No aching knots choking my throat. My soul remains snow-pure. Intact.
Content, I turn into the man still beside me, and we sleep. The following day, he remembers
to speak to me.

Vocabulary Lessons

My son renounces simple language.

Pleading for syllables, his toddler tongue fumbles; focused persistence finding purchase

between jaws, biting into hard consonants with pearly milk-teeth.

He is ravenous for vowels rolling soft across his lips. Furious to be denied another

sweet. Dismayed at skinned flesh of a knee fresh-scraped across pavement.

Twinkling stars? Luminescent. Tiny fingers tying shoes? Infuriated. Plastic dinosaurs

make way for ichthyosaurus, velociraptor, paleontologist: his future endeavors.

I revel in sharing the sweetest delicacies: compassion, community, restoration, justice.

But his palate must abide bitter pills and unsavory days; already

he learns to name villains: avarice, prejudice, ignorance, exclusion. Dropping

succulent words into his open mouth, I offer phonemic morsels on a platter

praying they become blades to chisel hard hearts, transform myopic visions, demolish

fear with a clear, crisp voice speaking life abundant.

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Camille Lebel, educator and mother to seven, lives on a small hobby farm outside of Memphis. She’s published or forthcoming in Hidden Peak Press, Rogue Agent Journal, Literary Mama, Sledgehammer Lit, Black Fox Literary Magazine, ONE ART, Inkwell, and more. She enjoys traveling, horse-whispering, and eating dessert first. She largely writes in the school car-line as a way to process special needs parenting, child loss, and religious trauma. You can find her on Instagram @clebelwords.

Photo credit: “Clematis.” by Free the Image via a Creative Commons license.

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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

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Emma Thompson Full Frontal at 62

By Angelica Whitehorne

(found poem from Emma’s interviews for the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande)

It’s challenging to be nude
at 62. The age that I am.
Nothing has changed.
Can’t stand
in front of a mirror, always pulling
something, judging it.

The neural pathways
of eight-year-olds going,
“I hate my thighs.”

I was 14, hating my body.
Everything that surrounds us
reminds us how imperfect we are,
everything is wrong with us.

In acting, it’s challenging to
see untreated bodies on the screen.
We aren’t used to women in the real-world.
We aren’t used to seeing time.

This thing is the same as it ever was.

The dreadful demands,
carved into my soul.
I didn’t think I could’ve done it.
And yet.

I can’t just stand there.
So, I stood there, nude at 62.

This is your vessel,
it’s your house,
it’s where you live.

I have lived in it.
I have experienced pleasure in it.

Angelica is a writer living in Durham, N.C., with published work in Westwind Poetry, Mantis, Air/Light Magazine and The Laurel Review, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, The World Is Ending, Say Something That Will Last (Bottle Cap Press, 2022). Besides being a devastated poet, Angelica is a marketing content writer for a green energy loan company and volunteers with Autumn House Press. Learn more at angelicawhitehorne.myportfolio.com.

Image credit: “Three Girls in front of a Mirror” (“Drei Madchen vor dem Speigel”) by Otto Müller, c. 1922, via the U.S. National Gallery of Art.

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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.