Four Women

Michael Helsem

June 26, 2022

1.

Cold starts blowing down on me

I remember

I was living at the church

My neighbor Melissa

Poet & lesbian

Asked me as she sometimes did

For a ride

It was to the Routh Street

Women’s Center

I drove by there many times

She was meeting a girlfriend

Who was getting an abortion

There were people on the sidewalk with signs

I remember

The vivid red

Of the signs’ bloody pictures

I don’t remember

What it was they chanted

It was all

So long ago

2.

I would never ask such a thing

But she told me

She’d had four abortions

Or maybe it was three

3.

She was briefly semi-famous

When we were both in college

For an essay she’d had published

On her abortion

4.

She’d driven to New Mexico for one

But something happened

Her son is grown now

With kids of his own

She says she’s not political

M.H. was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly afterward, fish fell from the sky.