Kaitlin Jandereski
Author’s Note: This poem was not a personal experience, but simply a poem written for my poetry class in college because life matters—even in the womb. Why? Because Jesus makes it matter and that makes all the difference.
My sister’s toddler. His blonde curls, wide-eyed baby blues,
visited me today.
With a bitter taste in my mouth, I rested my head in my hands,
my sister’s toddler was the same age as mine — that my Sadie would’ve been.
Little knuckles around his plastic red handles, riding his tricycle; I left him,
went off to the kitchen, wanting to forget “what-could’ve-been” memories,
Brewed an IPA, I drank,
just alcoholic enough to warm the pink toes
Sadie once had, the jumps of her squirming somersaults, the wiggling fingers
of her tiny hands I never felt.
I sat back in my chair, back to the bricks I was thrown upon, back to the rape in my bed,
back to the pregnant bump I did not want to see,
I could not see. Back in a pallid room with a homesick heart;
not wanting an abortion, but wanting life’s normalcy.
There’s her arm.
Get it, the doctor said.
Her arm?
It was a she?
Crucifying cramps electrocuted my whole body,
pain nobody told me I’d bear.
She.
It was a she.
A scar-faced jack-in-the-box,
interrupting my scheduled appointment in loud, black blood-cossetted tears.
She.
My little she.
Sadie,
that’s what her name will be —
Named during her eight-week old funeral,
unrehearsed, on a sterile grave.
If only I knew then that
it was a she.
My choices, my rights,
they were given to me,
But my dear Sadie’s rights
. . . Now, where were they?
Kaitlin Jandereski is a member of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Bad Axe, Michigan.
