Skip to content →

My High School Teacher Tells Me Men Would Line Up to Get Me Pregnant

The girl next to me       is me 
and she shakes out a laugh the same way
she rattles a can of spraypaint 
I say nothing      she gleams like wine 
on a parishioner’s lips    like a dog bowl 
licked clean      a paw is placed 
on the thickening glass of his heart      
he has never felt so close to Death     each night 
It turns in Its pew to stare at him      but he can’t
bring himself      to look     the girl next to me
is Josie and each time       she bites my nipple 
she tells me it’s not a sin not yet         as the eye 
in my teacher’s knee opens
 wider             as she squeezes my neck
and the strange botany of my womb
     blows its dark flowers 
like bubblegum         Eve’s birth marked the death 
of innocence      my teacher says and I know 
he wants me to be afraid
because of how closely he stands     the long, unlit
street in his voice      stilling Josie opens familiar 
bruises across my body
like a prayer book         is it a sin        
I ask the girl next to me          as the men 
turn in their seats         as the sky swaddles 
the moon like a stillbirth     as Josie slits open 
my belly, full of hair         look she says 
and I do

Kindall Fredricks (she, her) is a practicing registered nurse and poet from Conroe, Texas. She earned her MFA at Sam Houston State University and her work has appeared in New Letters, Grist, Passages North, Boulevard, North American Review, The Academy of American Poets, and more.

Tip the Author

Issue 38 >

Next >