Koi Pond

Isra Cheema

This poem was first published in Ghost City Press

TW: Abortion

Look down and see your unborn baby

floating in the middle of the toilet

bowl—you see it spin slowly

like a lone koi fish, it’s soft pinked

flesh swirling in a murky pond

of blood clot-lily pads.

You were driving and pulled

over to throw up from the lightning

-strike explosion of sharp pain

in your uterus—you vomited into

a crumpled Walmart bag as the car

inched towards someone’s mailbox.

Feel the liquid warmth gush out of you,

life ejected, no—rejected from your

body, that life-giver. Peer closer at it,

that no-longer-life no larger than a

just-plucked raspberry squished into

some sort of spring jam.

You want to bury it.

Fill a small ring box with silk threads,

a few tears, a palmful of dust, and a

folded-up note of its name for the angels

to know and watch over—but no, this

maroon sea is its cushioned coffin, the

cold ceramic toilet seat its halo.

You flush, watch it swish around the bowl

in circles, life-blood swirling in water like

striped fins swimming away from you,

as if Allah didn’t say your unborn child

would drag you into heaven by its

umbilical cord, as if this angel baby—