Because My Mother Told Me to Pray About It
Shannon Ashley
Once a month, I prayed for bleeding that ran smooth, a period like silk shining in a dark sky, but God gave me the crescent blade. His hand reached through my spine to squeeze my empty belly, twist fallopian tubes until my eggs were crushed in his palms, slipped into blood shed through his fingers, so I turned to science, popped a pill every morning until the stream slowed to spotting, a momentary blush instead of copper decay clenching from belly to back. And now I turn to science again, so my wife and I can round that belly out, fill it with baby cheeks and kicking toes, but my mother says good Catholics don’t change biology, and I wonder what God’s hands will do.
Shannon Ashley is an MFA alum currently working as a tech writer. In her off-time, she writes about family, home, and often mental health. She lives in Missouri with her wife, three dogs, two cats, and (soon) her baby boy. She has been published in Curating Home, an anthology of Kansas City poets, but Permafrost is her first magazine publication.