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/ 105 the story after the abortion dedication This is for you, other, you who know nothing from the inside except your own sensation. And this is for me and for my sister, the only close relation not containing the word other. And this is by me, the woman writing the story after the abortion. I, who am loathed in too many directions to measure by points of the compass—I, who am neither magnetized needle nor thorn. To you, who hate my body and the biosphere equally. And to you, who call killing the enemy love of country.To you, who daily rededicate your“Field of Blood” and despise bastard children. To you, who hate the welfare state and single mothers yet love your neighbor as yourself. To you, whose body does not interest the state because you are the state, indivisible, I dedicate this story. part one: in love Every love is chemically dependent: the strange strangling attraction of active agents in an aggressive compound. I’ve read this love (chemical addiction) 106 / cathryn hankla can last up to two years, so it is necessary in “committed” relationships to have a child every two years to knit the relationship back together just as it appears to be trying to fall apart. Centrifugal force and marriage vows crash head-on. I unbuttoned the buttons of your shirt and touched the fur covering worked muscle. Just touching you made me sweat. The first time you put your tongue in me and the first time I tongued your ear, sucking lightly at the lobe. Your indelicate push at my back as I stood at the stove, stirring. The smells of fresh bread and aftershave clung around you. A caul of desire slipped over my eyes until you looked like someone I could, who could, love. I licked spaghetti from your chest, and fed you strawberry shortcake from my breasts. I crawled over you and under you and through, rode you like a woman, like a man, like a woman.And it was a honey waterfall, white water, waves, like washing out and living. Let me put it bluntly: you rocked my socks. part two: direct quotations (first date) “No, I never want to have children.” (in the kitchen) “All I want to do is make you happy.” (in bed) “Is there anything I can do for you?” (on the couch) “I won’t come in your mouth.” (on the telephone) “Hello, beautiful.” (in the bathroom) “Please run more hot water for me.” (in bed) “Relax. There’s no way you can get pregnant.” (in the afternoon) “I want to be around for a long, long time.” (in the ocean) “You deserve everything and I want to give it to you.” (in bed) “I, I, I, want to come in, in, in your mouth.” (in the kitchen) “I want to lick you.” (in bed) “No, there is nothing I haven’t told you.” (driving) “You can’t be pregnant. You’re just uptight. Nerves. PMS . . .” (driving) “All my other girlfriends swallowed.” (on the phone) “I can’t believe it. Maybe the test is wrong.” (on the phone) “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.” (on the phone) “This is really bad timing for me.” the story after the abortion / 107 (on the phone) “I’ll pay half.” (on the phone)“Later, we can have three, one each year until your fortieth birthday. Just not now.” (in a letter) “I don’t know what you mean by asking for a contribution.” (on the phone) “It didn’t have to be that way.” (on the phone) “You never asked the right questions or I would have told you the truth.” part three: imagination In this alternate world the children slide from us as easily as the seed slides in, and nothing hurts and nothing happens to the rest of our lives. We push carriages in a permanent spring of lime green leaf-sprouting color, through an avalanche of red buds and tulips, singing “O Perfect Love.” The children spring perfect, too, akin to the pleasure of procreation. They let us be ourselves without the guilty secrets we must harbor, secrets sprung from the old trunk of musty clothes packed from the flapper era, the trunk in which our grandmother kept her stash of life in velvet-trimmed black cloaks, in sleek progressions of fashion now under house arrest. There is something you all should know about little girls’ attachments to playing dress...

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