day TWO HUNDRED and NINETY SEVEN

If You Float You Burn

The really popular comedian
is on my television
talking

about abortion.

This is what he chose to start his set with.
He keeps telling me
that I have a

right

to choose but that
let’s be honest
abortion
it is just killing babies, right?
I mean at the end of the day that
is what we’re talking about

and

the audience is laughing.
It is a sign
of agreement
that they are there with him

against me
and

I get it.
I can see from my couch
what it is he’s talking about.
It’s simple really
what he’s saying is
when women
chose to not have a child
they are also choosing to be

murderers

because even though
it literally takes two people
to create a third
it is women at the end of the day
that carry that weight
that burden
that labor
because to raise
a human being
means that your entire life
is sidetracked
but that is not a choice
women should make

and laughs are laughs
and that is what he is paid in
except
I can’t help but wonder
what the damage is
when you talk about women
as vehicles
to babies

and nothing more.

I think of assembly lines
and
car parts

What happens to
women who are reduced to
just their reproductive abilities
instead of their autonomy?

What is humanity?

Where are their futures?
Their dreams?
Where is the novel they would have written?
What disease could they have cured?
What is the life they could have lived
before
motherhood became

slavery

But
still what I’m saying
is old
and trite and women
have been made
to feel useless for ages.

We have one purpose
as the men tell us
one purpose
and that is to
create

more

men.

--Ally Malinenko