You might need time to think about all this

The Girls Who Went Away, 4

[Part of: The Girls Who Went Away: Poems.]

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The writing on the A-wing bathroom walls
Was our sex education class. He said
Don’t worry, getting pregnant’s really hard. 
We’d have to do it an awful lot.

I kept denying it until I couldn’t.
My mother touched my stomach and she frowned.
Reminded of the smoothness of her own,
I asked her how the mark’s removed, that scars
The belly where they take the baby out:
My God, that baby’s coming out the way 
That it went in. I thought she must be kidding.

I started searching when my son turned twenty. 
I learned he’d written me a letter, and
The agency had kept it secret. They said
You might need time to think about all this.
No, I don’t need a single fuckin’ minute.

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After “Nancy I,” in The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler.