elementary school taught me I don’t want to be a mother anymore. by Alaya Rocco (California, 17)

​the game we came back to most was
family; you be the mom I’ll be the dad
who wants to play
the baby.

and sometimes you had to be the mom
when there wasnt another choice.

but a woman in a painting poised like a fruit rotting on a tree
taught me that I don’t want to have kids anymore,

not if it means I’ll rot away inside after
when I’ve served my
purpose.

if gold paint on chipped fingers sunk into my gut
they would pull back dripping with juice
sticky sweet flesh pulling apart like
it's dead,
confirming there’s
no more room to grow
a life.

they teach us white-light molding evangelical Christian
end-of-the-world beliefs,

an amalgamation of human desire is not knowing why
people don’t rot,
or at least show it
when we’re unattached from vines
branches, or roots.

mothers paint another layer of skin on
to protect you from the world

but that's skin that tears away from themselves

bet that wasn’t part of the game

the way I talk, walk, sing, spin
when I’m angry
taught me I don’t want to be a mother anymore

school, our government, grocery stores, bus stops, parks
taught me I don’t want to be a mother anymore

not when I don’t get a choice.





Alaya Rocco is a High School senior from California. She is an aspiring writer and poet and you can find her work published or forthcoming in the Stirling Review and The Creative Zine, she is also a junior editor for Polyphony Lit magazine. When she’s not engrossed in a book you can probably find her wandering in bookstores offering unsolicited book recommendations, drinking tea (especially jasmine green), or people watching on the subway or the park. 
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