Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

Two years ago the United States Congress ratified the Personhood Amendment, which gives the constitutional right to life, liberty, and property to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception. Abortion is now illegal in all fifty states. Abortion providers can be charged with second-degree murder, abortion seekers with conspiracy to commit murder.

Woke up one morning to a president-elect she hadn’t voted for. This man thought women who miscarried should pay for funerals for the fetal tissue and thought a lab technician who accidentally dropped an embryo during in vitro transfer was guilty of manslaughter.

Its mission: to restore dignity, strength, and prosperity to American families. Unmarried persons will be legally prohibited from adopting children. In addition to valid marriage licenses, all adoptions will require approval through a federally regulated agency, rendering private transactions criminal.

but her okayness with being by herself—ordinary, unheroic okayness—does not need to justify itself to her father. The feeling is hers. She can simply feel okay and not explain it, or apologize for it, or concoct arguments against the argument that she doesn’t truly feel content and is deluding herself in self-protection.

sheep groaning (what narwhals sound like)

“When someone decides to murder a fellow human with a gun, we put them in jail, don’t we?” “Not if they’re a cop.”

But she wasn’t all that worried. It had to be political theater, she thought, a flexing of muscle by the conservative-controlled House and Senate in league with a fetus-loving new president.

What does the word “spinster” do that “bachelor” doesn’t do? Why do they carry different associations? These are language acts, people!

Opens the fridge: soft cheese, broccoli, chocolate pudding. Flings the cheese and pudding out the window into the neighboring yard, hears no splat because the wind is up. Recalls that chocolate is fatal to dogs. Has never seen a dog in that yard.

At the teachers’ picnic last summer she said to a fellow mother, “You don’t truly become an adult until you have kids.” The fellow mother said, “Totally.” The biographer, standing nearby with a mustard-glopped hot dog, said, “Seriously?” but this went unheard.

What joy to walk naked after a shower and hear your labia clap. To rise from the toilet and hear your labia clap.

I did not know that happens.

Selfish. But she has a self. Why not use it?

After federal and state taxes, social security, retirement, and health insurance, Didier brings home $2,573 per month.

Wow that doesnt seem like a salary where the other spouse would decide to not work.

To quit shrinking life to a checked box, a calendar square.