Arnisha Royston

cutting bell peppers

three targets and a single occupancy restroom 
in the back of a chicken and waffles restaurant, 

not roscoes. this is important because lack of 
details is how i got here. i always buy the off-brand 

test. use all three sticks–i have to be positive my 
mistakes. won’t hunt me for long. maybe if this was 

something wanted. they would be clearblue or first-response. 
each time i do this there is a question of morality 

of how the right thing is often wrong too. my best 
friend is having a baby and i had to have half of my

reproductive organs removed. i wish. i was better 
at making mistakes. i would give anything 

to want those almost babies now.  i'm cutting 
bell peppers. sliding the knife down each side. trying 

to avoid the center. the seeds spill out and i'm nauseous,
something else to be gutted. to not return its seeds 

to the world. it isn’t fair to know the hollowness of 
this body. i still want to be with someone who wants 

children. who wants me enough to question if knowing
this loneliness is worth it.

Arnisha Royston is a Best of the Net and Pushcart-nominated poet from Los Angeles. She received a BA in English from UCLA and an MFA from San Diego State University. Royston is the current Tickner Writing Fellow at the Gilman School in Baltimore, Maryland. Having started in the Spoken Word community and moved closer toward the written page, Royston is drawn to poetry that is intimate and urgent, with family, love, and Blackness at its center. Her poems are published or forthcoming in literary journals such as Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review, and RHINO.