By Addisyn Clapp

At ten years old I was Mother Mary
in my church’s nativity play. A Cabbage
Patch doll was shoved up and under my beige robes.
Young Joseph was beside me, and I cradled
the lumpy cabbage protruding from my child belly.
Jesus clung to my womb. He was tangled
in the umbilical threads of my robes. I yanked.
I pulled. I shoved all ten fingers inside me. The tips
of my fingers slipped against his unscarred body.
When Jesus popped free of my blanketed womb,
he slipped from my fingers.
The first thing he touched was not me,
but the church carpet. Joseph’s cheeks reddened
like the holly berries strung above
the construction paper manger.
I felt the amniotic fluid slither down my thighs,
pool around my ankles. There was Cabbage Patch Jesus—
face pressed against the blue carpet, a nimbus
of stray strands of hair and dust
collected around his head.
Ten seconds into divine motherhood,
and I was a failure. No midwife next to me,
no mother to hold my hand. Worse than a failure,
I was alone. I left him there, starfished
and naked under the fluorescents.

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Addisyn Clapp is a graduate of Young Harris College with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and minors in English and Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia and works as a barista. She plans to attend graduate school in Massachusetts in the fall.