Seventeen years spent on the family farm.
Home from school to the shock of my room packed on the porch.
My baby book, framed pictures of perfectly posed horses, trophies and ribbons, horse magazines with my name inside, plaid button up shirts on hangers, my well worn saddle, dirty spurs, bridles, the futon where my friends used to crash, huge log bed, tv stand, belt buckles, cowgirl jewelry spilling out of my best jewelry box, jeans, pretty pink jammies, and piled on top was my A.j.P.H.A. Letterman jacket with my best cowgirl hat.
The contents of my entire life outside without warning.
My egg donor demanding my house key and saying it’s time for you to go now.
I was 17 when you were born and now I have my life to live she said.
My college plans cancelled, but the woman who bore me graduated college four years later.
My heart cracked like the dried puddles in that driveway on the dead end of Ellis Road.
Heave ho to work I’d go, determined and still received my diploma months later.
Where I’d go, nobody would know.
Gretchen W