The Price of Rights

The price of rights 

The ballots have been cast, an ink darker than black, running deep through the paper, seeping like blood through cloth. The news breaks: a party rises, but the victory is painted with pain. Behind closed doors, the voices of wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers grow faint, suffocated by laws that strip them of rights to their own bodies. They have voted this way—not because they’ll bear the cost themselves, but because they’ve chosen to turn away. 

Crimson-streaked streets lie ahead. Without access to safe healthcare, many will suffer silently, and some will not survive at all. Those who once held choice in their hands now watch it slip away, taken by the same hands that penned those laws. 

autumn chill in the air— 
a ballot drenched in blood, 
voices fall silent 

Those who voted think the matter is settled, the issue neatly tucked away. But the wounds will grow. The blame lies there, on ballots, now turned red by the suffering they will cause. Rage will replace grief, festering in those left behind, a wound that no policy can quiet. The hands that marked those ballots, that took those lives—these voters may never wash that blood away.