Originally published in a journal that I asked to remove it. A poem that I love. A poem that meant the world to me.

Apologia

At 22, I disappeared for a minute.

I did not respond when you called me.

I wanted the death Alabama didn't offer.
I did not want the local D & C option. I refused
the twilight sedation, the succor of a specialist
doing the deed for me.

I have no excuse for what
I needed: to be
guilty.

After visiting a former lover in Manhattan,
I entered the Liberty Clinic, swallowed the first pill,
its origins French as the famous
green statue.

I swilled Mountain Dew to swallow
the final pill on the train for Coney Island.

I say Coney when I mean
destination, the termination of pregnancy, the train ending
in a carnival, apart.

The gulls witnessed
everything.

I stood on the boardwalk, marveling,
dumbstruck by dizziness as something left
this body, its warmth flooding my jeans.

My hands shook like toy airplanes.

No doula or doctor or nurse or friend intervened.

No expert stood between
my breath and the sky,
my breath and the clouds, clotting,
my breath and the unwanted baby,

my life

and the blood
on my hands, the certain solace,

a choice
I made with myself.
I did it all. I did everything.

I wore the silver mermaid necklace for years,
a souvenir.