My OB/GYN tells me I may not be able to have children.
Casually. In between a joke and her fingers inside. Something about scarred. Something about trauma. Clinical. I do not laugh. It feels like she forgot to take a land mine out. I refuse to cry, to be weak in front of another woman. I am a small Brown train wreck driving home.
[Sometimes] I wonder what it’s like to be a woman and have to give that news. If she ever feels less than.
I’ve cried in the pampers aisle of Target. I used to fuck unprotected, hoping it would end in a child that I had the option to keep. [I want] to yell at tired moms. I am so bitter to be an aunt. I take birth [control] to convince myself it’s a choice. Though I have not told my family. My body feels like a sanctuary God or science forgot to finish.
Britteney Black Rose Kapri is a teaching artist, writer, performance poet and playwright based out of Chicago. A former ensemble member and teaching artist for the Hip Hop Theater nonprofit Kuumba Lynx. Currently she is an alumna turned teaching artist of Young Chicago Authors. Her first chapbook Winona and Winthrop was published in June of 2014 through New School Poetics. She has also been published in Poetry Magazine, Seven Scribes and Kinfolks Quarterly. She is a 2015 Rona Jaffe Writers Award Recipient.