The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Spoil by Alyse Bensel

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Shotgun

Let’s start with her, pregnant, you,
unknowing, then knowing, me,

learning. I’m tired of this narrative
I’ve numbed to, like a twelve-gauge

fired off too many times against
my shoulder. I used to watch

my father disassemble and clean
his guns, then put them back together.

My non-pregnancy is an anti-narrative.
The hollow in my throat

constricts as I’m written out.
People ask me why I know so much

about motherhood and childbirth.
They ask me how many children

I have. I reply, none. The narrative stops.
A wedding, an ultrasound,

a countdown to when you disappear.
I cease to matter. My potential

children don’t exist. I met a woman
who married because, two months

into dating, she took antibiotics.
Her son was round and luminous.

She could not believe he existed.
We discussed caesareans,

mastitis, stitches, the slow
healing process. Postpartum.

She asked me to find
her husband. He ignored her.

The shotgun’s primary parts:
the barrel most of all, where you

pull the snake through, scrub
the chokes, clean apparent filth

off the action. Who made
the weapon? Who harbored it?

I have the story out of order.
There are too many moving parts

I mistook for an opportunity
to clear this up. I keep on missing

everything you left out.
This narrative may not

hit its intended mark. I blame
any misfire on my ignorance.

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