Iᑎ TᕼE ᔕEᗩᖇᑕᕼ Oᖴ
Laura Mota-Juang
I stare at the pharmacy's pregnancy tests
searching for cheap,
accurate and comprehensible.
They are pink boxes,
attention seeking boxes,
happy boxes.
Voices approach my pharma-location.
Quickly, I turn my body in the opposite direction.
I search the faces of the voices' owners and find strangers.
A discovery that reveals my ridiculous shame.
In my hiding location, at the height of my eyes,
a bottle with a blue eyed baby smiles from the shelf.
The cardboard baby is not selling just a cough remedy, no.
He sells baby giggles, a joy filling sound
even for my undesiring belly.
He is untreatened by my cynicism.
The baby knows that if he wasn't cardboard,
I'd hide my face on my hands
and practice other clowneries in the search for his laughter.
I return to my tests' options.
Some of them are on sale. Is it a time of the year
with low baby-making-sex?
Does it mean I have less chances to be impregnated?
Or are these tests close to their best before date,
and so should I not buy them?
New voices take my body into hiding
–again I am with the still red cheeked, mid-laughter,
joy of someone else's life baby.
And again I see strangers and feel my ridiculous shame.
It begs people to understand:
"Please, believe me I know of Global Warming!
I am not trying to have a baby!!!" Or
"No, I have other dreams, I have modern dreams!"
The choice of test weighting like a fetus on my womb.
There are tests that can tell you're pregnant
six days earlier than others –for a couple dollars more.
I remind myself that my first nausea happened a month ago,
but can you imagine the rare bad luck that makes these 6 days relevant?
A rare bad luck that faults my IUD, can you imagine?
I take the couple-of-bucks more expensive test.
I bring to the cashier waterproof mascara
and the test. I pay in cash.
I put the test in the most bottom of my tote bag
–a strategic placement. But hiding is not enough.
I want to carry a more pleasurable object, a guiltless object,
so I leave directly to the fruterie besides the pharmacy.
And there my hands meet the convenience of a bag of grapes.
I walk around the aisles. I feel the lack of something amusing
and my trajectory must go on. So I line up at the cashier.
People line up behind me.
On my turn, it's revealed that the grapes were priced at 18 dollars.
In my hands I hold a twenty. I stare at the green plastic dead queen .
I stare at the middle-aged man at the cashier.
I say "I'm sorry, I changed my mind."
Instead of moving away,
I wait for the man to say something rude.
I keep searching on his face for a sign
of anger or vexation.
He stands expressionless. Maybe he even mutters an "OK."
But I can't quite tell and I keep looking.
Laura Mota-Juang is a Taiwanese-Brazilian shameless experimentalist from São Paulo and based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. She is the author of Light Spill (Block Party Press 2023), a chapbook inspired by Physic's imagination. Other than writing, Laura's current practices include analogue collage, photography, linoprinting, live modeling, dancing and events organizing. She is currently painting creatures on thrifted garments at @NoFictionProjects.