Plan B

[bruorton]

Veterinary assistant
was just something that came along
at the right time to pay the bills

while she was going back to school.
Her boyfriend at the time told her
about it because his ex had worked there

before her mom got sick
and she had to move back to Boulder
because her dad was still in Ankara

teaching economics at the university
and hoping he might be able
to get his novel published.

It was a book about a geneticist
working in the produce section
of a Miami supermarket

who meets the sort of woman he had always
thought he would marry,
but knows that his wife waiting in Guyana

was left pregnant at 17
by the first great love of her life
and he cannot bear to repeat such cruelty.

And she, working as a typist
to supplement what he can send her,
once a week walks to the city park

in the evening with the child
that she never meant to have
where they watch for the first stars

and like a ritual, as they return home,
she always tells her darling
you can be anything you dream.

Comments

[bruorton.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's not circular -- tell the truth, once I wound up in the novel I realized I was sort of trapped there as far as the six-degrees thing goes.

And yes to the social commentary; in class we just wound up discussing whether it was justifiable to tell children a literal lie, when they are too young to understand the world's complexity, that life is less what you intend to do but how you respond to what happens to you.

[emusnare.livejournal.com]

Yes to reading in too much? With an unplanned teenage pregnancy and a title the same as a controversial contraceptive I found myself wondering if it was more than cooincidence.