Wow. I am at a loss and my heart feels like a stone even from halfway across the world, hearing that Georgia is moving to illegalize abortion. My home.  It’s such a far step backward it makes my soul ripple with fear.

If this law was in action when I was a scared 18 year old, fresh out of high school, I would be the mother of a four year old right now. Or dead… or imprisoned. 

 

The truth is- my experience wasn’t the one you expect to hear. I wasn’t there by myself, I had someone holding my hand and caring for me in the aftermath. I didn’t feel guilty or even allow that narrative of shame to show up on my radar. My life. My choice. My empowered decision. The people who helped me were at Planned Parenthood were warm and lovely. 

It was such a matter-o-fact decision and I chose to respond that way. I chose not to feel that loss in the moment and not to be haunted by a ghost.

And then, four years down the road, my senior year of college, something mystical happened.

I had long since broken up with the boyfriend I got the abortion with, and evolved into a woman I could have only hoped to become. And one day, after years of not even thinking about what had occurrenced all those years ago, I spoke to that soul while sitting on my front porch, drinking iced coffee on a hot Charleston SC morning.

My pen flew to unravel my heart on a sterile white page and the conversation that unfolded brought tears streaming down my face.

The tears were never of sadness. They were of connection and insane joy. That experience was one of the most divine moments I have ever had.

That soul touched me, whispered “I’m glad you never felt guilty because I was never mad. I am here loving you, attached to your soul family for ever. You have an angel. Go out there and live your beautiful colorful ecstatic life.”

What follows is the black ink that fell from my eyes to the page. That ink won me a poetry prize and healing I never knew I needed.

I.

You would have been four in June, I guess.

That’s the first time I’ve ever let myself say that,

and the sunlight on this porch is the first time

I’ve ever let myself feel you. Even now,

you are the one to hold me in your

warmth, the roles still reversed

which makes sense. I wasn’t ready

to be a mother. And you- you never

made me feel the smallest molecule

of guilt. You never even asked me see you

as a “you”.

 

   II.

I sit in this sun, I swear it’s you

and I wonder, would you have been

a son? Back then, me and him were two wild

fires suffocating everything we touched,

High on honeycombs and baby blue

pills, starving for I love you, we could not

love you. I imagine your soul as a mangy coyote.

You must have had the blood of spanish bulls

coursing your veins to be conceived in the midst

of that 90 mile per hour love.

 

III.

I would not let myself cry then, so we took

your still, tiny heart and stuffed it into a shoebox

with old concert tickets, spilled tobacco,

and giftcards with $3.52 left on them.

We put the box in the back of the closet,

never touched it unless we needed

tobacco to fill a blunt wrap or were out

of money & hungry, but I want to thank

you, now, for letting me grow because I was

just the broken toe of the woman I am

today. I am sorry I could not

let you grow, too.

.

IV.

I listened to a podcast at 4 AM

when the wind rolled me over

in my sleep. Psychic Adriana –

the real shit. She spoke about the souls

of babies terminated, by either gods

or teenagers. Said babies like you aren’t

angry & you are somewhere, growing.

Said sometimes when I am inseminated by

spontaneous laughter, it is you. And so,

I suppose, you’ve always been here.

It’s odd to think we spent eight weeks

together, just you and I.

That your soul was stuck

in my body until we unstuck you.

It’s taken me four years

but today I let the first tears roll

like liquidated joy from the cracks

of my eyes. The first time I say hello. You

and I spend the morning on this porch. I

lay in the sun, you rest your soul on my

flesh, light gracing my unshaved legs.

Your laugh is an echo etched in my heart beat.

My body, the only record of your existence,

history written in my cells that separate

and reproduce and separate and

Reproduce, I know you, in the far down

caves of my body, I know you.

I cannot wait to know you again.

••••

 

When I read this poem in front of 200 people my voice was scratchy and low and beautiful. My skin was hot and wet in the summer heat of the south. It was one of those moments I didn’t want to spit fire but instead revealed a really raw layer of much heart. I sat down immediately after next to a friend as if to run for cover from the eyes that witnessed me. I didn’t know if   even understood what this poem meant or if it struck them as powerful.

I never shared it on my social media as I often do, not did I submit it anywhere online. As empowered as I was, I didn’t want to shame my family or people who loved me. I didn’t want to throw a personal experience in everyone’s faces. I made excuses.

After I read this work in front of a crowd, I went home with my heart glowing like a shiny stone. I was so proud and light and full of love. I logged on to my social media that night and there was a message from a stranger. She said “Henley, I wanted to come up and thank you for the poem you read today but I knew if I said anything I would burst into tears. Hearing your poem is the first time I’ve allowed myself to begin healing. Thank you so much”.

I have shaken souls with my words before and people are so kind to offer their hearts and ears to what one human has to say, but this changed everything.

This wasn’t a love poem or angry feminist rant. This was about a deep soulful wound and the permission to heal, and not only heal, but to have a loving connection with that soul we said goodbye to. This is work that changes the course of people’s lives…

and I still never thought I needed to share it with the world. I never thought women would need this so much, or that the world would need help understanding the choice to have an abortion can be loving and positive.

My heart hurts to think of myself at 18 in Georgia if things were as they might be come 2020. What lengths would I have gone to to get that procedure done? How afraid would I be knowing I had no legal options? My experience would have been drastically different and far more traumatic than anything I experienced.

Georgia- I loved you but today, I mourn you.