I was sixteen.
I loved sex.
Sex by myself.
Sex with a friend.
Sex in the shower.
Sex on the beach.
I wanted to learn all about sex.
I wanted to learn by doing.
I was sixteen.
Sex made me powerful.
They wanted sex.
I could give them sex.
They would wine and dine
And lie to impress…
All for sex.
They didn’t seem to know
I wanted sex too.
I was sixteen.
They were notches on my bedpost
I would love them and leave them
Or they would learn of my other lovers
And leave, broken-hearted.
I just wanted sex.
I was sixteen.
I had a teen line of my own.
I thought lactation was gross.
I didn’t have any plans for the future.
I talked in, like, a valley girl accent.
No one would have chosen me to be their mother.
I did not want a child.
I was sixteen.
Sex was a crime
I’d been caught.
Unless I could find three hundred dollars
I would have to do the time.
Nine months to life.
I begged all my friends for money.
I really didn’t want a child.
I was sixteen.
I rehearsed the conversation with my parents.
I had a plan for what to do when they threw me out.
I was shocked when they didn’t.
Giving birth was now my only choice.
What I wanted no longer mattered.
I was sixteen.
I heard that I’d been raped.
To be fair, it was technically true
But that was long ago.
Now sex was natural.
Sex was good.
Not everyone did it
And we still thought everyone should.
“Who said I was raped?” I asked
It was my mother spreading rumors
I tried to quell them.
I had enjoyed the sex, I told anyone who would listen.
I was sixteen.
I did not want to give birth.
I did not want a child.
If I had to bring a child into this dying world,
I wanted to give the child to someone who wanted it.
I didn’t want to be a mother.
I was sixteen.
I found a home for my unwanted child.
My parents said they would care for the child instead.
I had no choice in the matter.
I couldn’t change my fate
But I could find a silver lining
I just wanted the child to be loved.
My parents could love a child.
I was sixteen.
A strange man had his hands on my vulva.
He was poking metal instruments inside me.
This was what rape felt like.
I felt like I was helpless.
I felt like I was trapped.
I felt like escape might mean something worse even than this.
I did not want him to touch me.
I did not want to give birth.
I did not want a child.
Nobody cared what I wanted.
I was sixteen.
I was in a birthing class.
I didn’t know how to do a kegel squeeze.
My birthing partners were family matriarchs.
They laughed at my ignorance.
I thought it was something only adults could understand.
I was just a child.
I was sixteen.
I spread my legs every month for a stranger.
It feels like rape every time.
I don’t want him to touch me.
I don’t want to go back.
My mother delivers me to him.
He answers to her.
I do not know what to ask.
I was seventeen.
The baby wasn’t coming.
I would have to be induced.
I would have a vaginal birth.
I still didn’t know what a kegel was.
I still didn’t want a child.
I still didn’t want to “experience the joy of childbirth”.
I was seventeen.
I had stitches in places I didn’t know you could get stitches.
Someone placed an unwanted child in my arms.
Matriarchs fussed over the baby.
I wanted them to take the baby away.
I wanted to give the baby to someone who would love him.
But they kept giving him back to me.
I still don’t want him.
I’ve done my 9 months.
I want to be paroled.
I was seventeen.
I hadn’t slept since coming home from the hospital
There was a screaming child in my room.
The child my parents said they would care for.
The child I tried so hard to give away.
The child I still didn’t want.
There is no soothing him, night after night.
He knows he’s unwanted
So he screams.