After the Accident

by Megan Mary Moore

I smell my blood before I see it.

Blood and gasoline swim
metallic and thick above my head,
tangling hair, warming my scalp.

Men rip the door from my car,
throw a sheet over my body for modesty,
I’m sorry I’m heavy.
The men I don't know laugh
and take me to the ambulance.

I’m breaking out in hives
and the doctor asks me if I want children.
Big red bumps bubble on my skin.
I watch them grow, my body a new planet
red and rocky.
I may.

Nurses don’t give me a chance to feel pain
You didn’t say you were allergic to morphine.
I’ve never eaten morphine before.
They groan, start a line of Dilaudid.

Children.
Your pelvis is shattered.
Odds are you won't be able to carry.
Carry?
Children.

The rest of the day I fall in and out of sleep,
and I can’t stop remembering
I was a baby once.

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Megan Mary Moore is the author of Dwellers (Unsolicited Press, 2019). Her poetry has
appeared in Rattle and is forthcoming in Plainsongs and Lammergeier. She lives in Cincinnati
where she teaches dance and looks for ghosts. www.meganmarymoore.com