Mikey Cody Apollo: Babies
Babies
When his ex-girlfriend lies and tells him she is pregnant, when she plants the idea about the seed of his seed, everything inside of me coils.
Later that night, we will love and sleep like there is not a ghost of our own making inhabiting the body of a third party.
A month will go by, almost two. She will tell him she miscarried. Give him no evidence that the child was ever alive to begin with, but she thinks by doing this, their relationship, the one I ruined with my hands, my lips, will be.
He does not ask for her back. Does not ask for me, either. Cannot undo the mouth that found me in the midst of their union.
For weeks, I clawed at my own womb and begged it to expire. Clawed at my own heart and begged it to stop beating.
What is the point of this body if it refuses to be home or church to a man and his child?
He is the only person I ever wanted to give one to, anyway. After all, what’s another one of my wants to be sacrificed to make room for his? What is one more?
He sleeps to avoid talking about the baby, to avoid confirmation she is a liar.
Hopes the sound of me slipping in half can drown out that type of noise. The crying he’ll hear in the back of his head. The lullabies that’ll cling to my throat like a cough. The first words we both have to swallow with spit and booze.
The worst part is the explanation. To think about how I would have to explain to strangers this child that is not mine. How we’d pretend it’s our baby the same way we pretend we love each other and not just the flesh.
I want to name the child after the space between us, or instead, after the way the sky looked the night I first realized,
I will never be anybody’s mother.
MIKEY CODY APOLLO is a spoken word artist born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Much of her work revolves around her experiences as a Black woman and an intersectional feminist. Apollo discovered her love for writing after her first grade teacher read a Junie B. Jones book to the class.
When Apollo is not updating her Facebook page or falling in love, you can find her planning a show (and then napping backstage) for House of Renji, a creative platform and record label based out of her hometown.
Apollo credits Kendrick Lamar, Andrea Gibson, Barry Jenkins, and Melissa Lozada - Oliva as some of her greatest inspirations.
Her first collection of poems, "Black Girls, Silence, and Other Things Made of Gold," was self-published in July 2017. She hopes to release her second collection in Spring of 2019.
