When a jasmine-scented
teenager (not yet my mother)
came up pregnant
with me, my father
stepped up.
They did what teenagers did
in 1951. Married.
Mismatched
spectacularly–
fifteen years of yelling and beer.
Four kids and two
miscarriages
before she turned
twenty-four.
No education
past high school.
So after the divorce,
crap jobs,
crappier men,
government cheese,
no sleep.
Haunted, her eyes.
There are men
making decisions
right now
about lives of girls
and women.
Some do not want
children to know
how their bodies work.
Some do not trust
women to make
decisions. As if
women were people,
as if women
know what’s best
for their lives,
for the lives
of their children.
That broken teen
who carried me, who
pushed me out
into this world,
that brilliant
ragged girl
died young, worn down
in her thirties.
One small life,
I know. The only life
she had. I speak for her
when I say
Let women live.
Let women be.
This poem was first published in Cutthroat: Truth to Power Special Issue and also opens Shumaker’s latest collection, Cairn.
