Posted 8:41 AM by melanie

About Abortion (a work in progress, hopefully)

I have never told
anyone
why I feel like I do (about abortion)
or what it was like to go hungry while I was pregnant
my stomach growling with a baby in it.
begging the welfare office not to cut my food stamps
(they did anyway)
Waiting two days, three days,
I was so hungry during the first half of my pregnancy.
That I kept loosing weight for the first five months.
I remember scraping pennies from every corner of my house
to buy a box of macaroni and cheese for 24 cents.
And making it without milk or margarine
Nothing left in the cupboards
and no car to go and argue with an office of sneering strangers
Stranded without a way to leave a rural area.

Calling asking for help and being told
Too bad. (Too fucking bad)
I'll never ask anyone for anything, again.
ever.


(This was 16 years ago and I still remember it
that feeling like a punch in the gut
when every tear sucks inward and won't fall
and helpless to help yourself
There is an anger that won't ever leave no matter what you do.
It's not the emptiness of a hollow stomach that you remember
It is more like a hard, firm, fist inside of you, it fills you up,
and the fist becomes your soul, but it's not a mean one
and it isn't evil.
It stays there long after the event and it makes you determined
to be tough, fierce, mean, resolved, and most of all independent.
Determined that you will never let anyone in your life
feel like you did, even the ones that said NO,
but you know better than to ask for their help, again.)


You resolve to never ask anyone for mercy.


And then finally the only person who would help was
Your old friend from childhood
(a person misunderstood by just about everyone else,
but she understands you and your soul)
So, so, thankful to have this friend, who cares
(Renee) who makes sandwiches at a deli
She would drive 20 miles out of her way
She would sneak the day old ones home to me.
She was told to throw them away
but she’d bring home a whole bag of cellephane wrapped
sandwiches just for me.
and how good it felt to have day old barbeque
and how rich and greedy I felt
with a whole bag of whole wheat, rye, or white
ham, pastrami, and roast beef,
and just how good it tasted
and there was no limit to how many of them
I could eat in the evening
as she arrived at my house with the bag of sandwiches
meant for the dumpster
that ended up in my stomach instead.

Oh yeah,
About abortion
I’ve been determined to never be weak or needy, again
Ever.
That my son will never go hungry like I did
Ever.
I save every little bit of food
(scraps of bacon, ends of onions) in my freezer
and keep large stocks of beans and rice
just in case.
That I will never hold a crying baby in my arms
and beg them not to turn off the water
or serve an eviction notice.
That I was never liked as a human
at least not enough to reproduce
not that much, anyway.
And certainly no one
Wanted me or my offspring.
I am always hiding
this from my smiling
much doted on suburban son.
He and I were never wanted
Ever.
(so what could I assume about having, more children?)

The one lesson that I learned in life
My main fact in life
That I learned in my young adulthood

Growing up the hard way
in the southern United States
Louisiana in particular
Was if you’re
POOR
Don’t have children.
If you can help it.
Nobody wants you or them.

My poor friends have kids, now
and I try to help
People have hooked up to my electricity
I've fed entire families
Given out instructions on how to fill out
food stamp, welfare, student aid forms
(stuff I wished I'd known back then)

And you know Louisiana is like a third world country
in the US.
Tourist come and go and enjoy the atmosphere and the food
They ignore the poverty
the growing prison population,
the crime, the murder rate
and the poor kids.
And there are alot of them
in that state doing
without things that most people in this country
take for granted
like
food.

Melanie Burke Zetzer

(You know it's funny that the same people
who want you to have children
are the same ones who want to cut back on
school lunches, welfare, and food stamp programs)

Posted 7:44 AM by melanie

(Inhale)

Stoner thought on a rainy Thursday morning.

Being at a loss for words is not something that happens to me often, yet sometimes, I am only at a loss for the right words to say at the correct time, and end up being hopelessly socially awkward, but still naive enough, and determined enough, to forge my way through, irregardless of my state of emotional well being at the time with the knowledge that one day follows after the next, and so on and even if we slow in our journey, we always reach our final destinations, and in the end, the most marvelous thing about being human is our mortality, and the comforting knowledge of generations behind us, and the generations ahead, and the smallness of each of us as individuals.

(Exhale)

Posted 4:48 AM by melanie

Great Expectations and Iraq

Every now and then the façade crumbles, the face cracks, and you’re in the here and you’re in the now. You tolerate no amount of failure in your life; you are not allowed to burn the birthday cake, or dinner, or fail to meet even the smallest of goals.

And then something goes wrong, several things at once, and you become aware of yourself, and your environment, and life becomes achingly real again, and you feel guilty for dwelling on intellectualisms, like educational or career goals.

The carpet beneath your feet feels twice as soft, while dimly viewing television news about villagers in stone dwellings with dirt floors, and you watch women dipping water from mud puddles, while your own faucet runs clear.

Children on news channels cry for soldier fathers and mothers, and entire families are incinerated in boxy sedans with babies in their arms while trying to find safety. And then you feel guilty for feeing bad at all, but you feel guiltier for feeling good.

You dip strawberries in white chocolate, and watch it set, and the sofa cushion beneath your butt becomes twice as soft.

It’s spring and you’re planting flowers; pansies, petunias, and begonias, white, yellow, pink, and purple, just outside your door, and the dogwoods are blooming behind your house.

People are laying without limbs in makeshift hospitals, and some of those soldiers aren’t going to make it home to see their children.

You boil headless tiger shrimp with limes and hot red pepper, and you ponder friendship as the shrimp turns pink, and you meet someone new, but you fail to meet all of your personal goals, but they don’t seem so important today, and you feel guilty for feeling at all, emotional excesses, don’t really matter, as long as your roof isn’t leaking, and your cupboard is full, and life goes in spite of it at all.

You argue with your new male friend about whether it’s OK to kill snakes if they’re not bothering you, and he says, “NO, you catch them, and let them go.” and you think he’s crazy, because you always kill the poisonous ones.

And then you remember laughing at a king snake last year, sunning in your garden, oblivious of the neighborhood tomcat creeping up, and you remember shewing away the cat , and saving the snake, and then you feel guilty for ever caring about a snake.

You tell your friend (a gulf war veteran) that, yes of course, if they are poisonous, you must kill them, or they may come back, and crawl in your house some summer night. He disagrees in a slow Texas drawl, and laughs at you for arguing your point so hard.

And you laugh at yourself, and then you feel guilty for laughing, and you both go back to eating double dipped white chocolate strawberries, and watching the TV news; he watches the coverage like a hawk, and you know he can still taste the sand and dirt in his mouth, and you think about killing the king snake if he comes back to your garden this year .