The Clinic
by and published in Edition Two of Pomegranate
The clinic brooded silently
behind its automatic doors – trying so hard not to be white.
A frozen necropolis for old issues of Cosmo,
leafed through by girls
who loudly advertise that they’re bitches –
spray on tan, metallic heels, venereal diseases.
I sat in the kids’ corner,
too demure for the waiting area,
piecing together eight-spoked plastic flowers
undying.
Children’s toys.
I remembered the satisfying stiff click holes
from nursery school.
I waited for you
but didn’t have the guts to go in myself –
do a swab-test – let the rubber blue-finger butterflies in between my legs.
You asked me if I didn’t trust doctors.
I would find out two weeks later the baby –
the dream I’d warmed somewhere below sickness,
was dead. I bled it out.
You got free condoms.
I ran for the bus.
Amy Blakemore
Amy Blakemore has been writing poetry ‘seriously’ for a couple of years now, since beginning GCSE English Literature, taking a look at the syllabus anthology, and thinking it didn’t look that hard. She is a South-East London girl born and raised, attending Bacon’s college, which boasts as former students Miss London 2007 and Jade Goody, where she is now doing AS Levels in English Literature, German, Philosophy & Ethics, and History. She has been published in The Young Writer Magazine, Rising and Iota. She was the Southwark borough winner for the BBC’s Talent In Schools contest in the field of creative writing, and was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year 2007.