The Year ‘Caught Out There’ Became My Theme Song

Strep throat caught me for the second time
in two winters. The Doctor said my immune system was weak

because of the baby but I knew
it was that college in Ypsilanti that did it.

I got my first ‘C’ in Linguistics 
cause the blonde professor with a dog whistle voice

told me “a policy is a policy” when I missed the quiz:
stomach protruding past my feet

doctor’s note and antibiotic bottle in hand.
I did not hit her or throw the desk I should have been

sitting in; Someone told me once that babies feel everything
you do. I stopped crying when he stopped coming

home. When the landlords didn’t renew the lease. When he suggested 
adoption it hung in the air like a kite, the string just out

of reach. My body flinched one day, as if it knew what was coming.
Then the brand-new Mitsubishi Galant was two payments

behind, tube television, thrift store dishes and everything
else I owned stuffed in its four-door frame. When we applied

for the next apartment my husband made me file him
as head of household though I worked two jobs

while he snake-gripped my life full time. 
One morning, the repoman got me. Two months later

the door had an eviction letter plastered across it a wanted
poster, all my shame strewn like dirty laundry at the curb

I was still sick sleeping on his granny’s futon
with nothing to my name but debt and a nose

spread like unkempt vines. Then 
a month before she was born,

The nigga hit me.

I break.