My friend Jess wrote a pocket-sized book of poetry I carried in my purse for many years. A blank black cover with white font, No Subject, Just Reflection found its home among loose change, random pens, elusive hair ties and the pink Motorola flip phone that hung out in my increasingly tattered tote bag.
The book became a traveling talisman, unimpeachable proof that someone I knew had made it. A writer I looked up to had graduated from thought remnants scribbled in miniature spiral notebooks to an indie publisher that put her soul work to print.
She gave me a copy, writing an inscription on the back front page. I can’t wait to read your book one day. Love, Jess. I relished the confidence she had in me. I didn’t know if I would ever write a book or even could or even wanted to, but it was pleasant to imagine one day I too could feel as if I’d made it. Not for my amateurish poetry though. That was very much her world, and I admired it from a safe distance.
Reading the poems as I did—meanderingly, wistfully, a few at a time between classes—the book was an omnipresent good-luck charm during my final semesters at Syracuse University. I liked having a continual reminder of the possibilities of putting oneself out there. I told my mom about the book with pride. Jess wrote a book of poetry. It’s been published and everything.
This genuine excitement served me well. It was only a few months later I found myself needing to refresh my mother’s memory of the little book I carried everywhere. A fictitious poetry reading at a campus bookstore provided the perfect cover—a plausible excuse for traveling across two state lines two weeks after graduation. I told my parents I was going to a poetry reading, but I got an abortion instead.
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Jack wasn’t the first Pita Pit delivery driver I’d hit on, nor was he the first to reciprocate interest. After breaking things off irrevocably with my long-time college boyfriend, I set out to systematically make my way through the hottest of the delivery crew. I was undeterred by the potential messiness of mixing business with pleasure, and alcohol proved to be a powerful fuel. Inhibitions removed alongside the specialness of a virginity already lost, there was little to stop me from enjoying my newly single status. I took full advantage.
Pita Pit was the ideal employer for students, twenty-somethings, and night owls who preferred the dark silence of predawn to the energetic hustle of the traditional nine-to-five. There were two shifts available when I walked into the campus location on Marshall Street and left with a job: five to 10 p.m.; 10 p.m. to close. They needed workers willing to endure what I lovingly called “the drunk shift”—the time when in-the-bag college students exited the surrounding bars, slurring and starving and desperately in need of sustenance to sober them up.
I readily agreed to work the late hours. My parents were generously paying for my schooling, but I quickly learned spending money was necessary to wholly embrace the collegiate lifestyle. One semester into my four years, I joined the Pit Crew ready to earn cash fast. And did I ever.
The same students who’d forget what they ordered during the four-foot shuffle between the register and the line were often the ones who tipped $10 if you played their favorite song over the speaker system while they stood eating messily in the corner of a shop that had zero tables and packed an impressive number of patrons for its modest size. I’d regularly leave with upwards of $20 in nightly tips in addition to my biweekly paycheck. It felt like a lot at the time. Besides, the job was fun more often than it wasn’t.
Friday and Saturday nights were especially wild, but even Thursdays—“Flip Night” at Faegans, a nearby Irish pub where patrons could earn free drinks (and get dangerously drunk) by correctly guessing heads or tails when the bartenders flipped a coin—were often chaotic and frenzied. I loved it all. Working part of the three-day weekend felt more like a party. The Pit Crew may have been a ragtag team of college students and post-graduates, but together we were a united front. A five-person crew tackled the register, grill, line, and prep work behind the scenes. We completed these tasks and more, all while watching the chip rack and tip jar for sticky-fingered thieves looking to pull a fast one.
Most of my college friends were fellow crew members. There was an unspoken solidarity between us, a bond formed easily with those who stood behind the counter. I struggled to connect with other students, especially those who never lacked spending money and could afford to focus exclusively on their studies. It was hard to relate to people who weren’t in the trenches until 3:30 a.m. on weeknights, only to wake a few hours later for an 8 a.m. lecture that required a 20-min bus ride from South to Main campus. Jack was one of the few people who understood.
We started working together during my final year at SU and his super senior year at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. By the time I began expressing interest, I had completed the transformation from reserved fast-casual restaurant worker into emboldened social butterfly. This did not happen overnight. There were a few preliminary factors. For one, I benefited from being “the girl behind the bar.” A trope explored to much hilarity in an episode of How I Met Your Mother, the idea is people appear infinitely more attractive when occupying the space behind the counter. It certainly didn’t hurt.
In my case, the cycle became self-perpetuating. Because I was a captive audience for a customer’s advances, I got hit on a lot. This increased my confidence, and that confidence empowered me to turn up the charm even more. A friend once overheard two guys standing outside the store talking with excitement about how “the hot pita girl” was working that night. It was a moniker I could get behind. I embodied it the best I could. Karli may not have been particularly promiscuous, but The Hot Pita Girl could bag anyone she wanted. In the end, I was more selective than indiscriminately spicey. I only slept with Jack.
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Thirteen years later, I’d have to Google his name to remember exactly what he looked like. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten the basics so much as I couldn’t remember the details. I recalled dirty-blond hair and light eyes with crinkles in the corners, deep laugh lines and a thin-but-muscular build. He had the type of quiet, goofy personality for whom being happy seemed like a completely effortless endeavor.
He was cute and chaotic and offbeat. I liked that he was a few years older than me, that he was fun-loving, and a little different. I’d never met a guy who enjoyed fly fishing or wanted to be a park ranger when he grew up. I’d also never encountered anyone who, having once reached a toll booth without change, gunned it through the EZ Pass Lane, only to carry a gigantic jar of overflowing coins in his front passenger seat ever since.
I accepted that Jack wasn’t going to be my forever person. We planned to graduate and go our separate ways. Perhaps it was the predetermined expiration date that made our fling so intense. The sex was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Although the positive pregnancy test would unsettle me many weeks later, I wasn’t really surprised. I could recall the precise moment he got me pregnant. After midnight on an extra-soft mattress inside a messy bedroom in a cramped house off Westcott Street, I felt the spark of new life.
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The morning after, Jack dressed in the previous night’s clothing and left me naked in bed. We made plans to meet up again later. I slept a little more before going to meet my friend Lauren, who kindly agreed to accompany me to the closest Planned Parenthood to acquire Plan B. The stern woman behind the counter filled a paper bag with the proper pill (for free. Thanks, Obama!) and no less than 30 condoms.
This felt ironic given that the limitations of condoms had been the reason for my visit in the first place, but I let it go. I popped the single tablet less than 12 hours after the act, and I felt good about my odds. The product claimed to be 95 percent effective if taken within the first 24 hours—the sooner, the better. I ignored the little voice in the back of my head that remembered the inexplicable feeling of the spark. I chose to place my trust in medical science. Pharmacology was on my side.
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When the short boy walked into the Pita Pit with a Napoleonic ego and bristly attitude, I smiled and went to take his order. I was covering the front alone. After he was rude to me at the register, I knew I was going to pick a fight. Fuming, I went over to the grill to heat up the meat. While it sizzled and cooked, I opened the pita as I’d done hundreds of times before and asked him what toppings he would like.
We got to the cheese, and he asked for cheddar. I sprinkled it on and added the meat. He asked for more cheese. I told him the first serving was free, but additional cheese cost a dollar. This was a cardinal rule at Pita Pit. Jesus himself could have sauntered into the restaurant, and he would have been asked to pay for extra cheese.
Not-Jesus lost it. Admittedly, I’d probably sprinkled less than a full serving, but I wasn’t backing down now. I wrapped the pita in wax paper as he continued to yell at me.
“I don’t understand why I can’t have more cheese.”
“And I don’t understand why you’re being such a fucking asshole,” I said without hesitation. He asked me to repeat what I’d said. I told him he’d heard me the first time. At this point he just wanted the pita, but every time he reached for it, I’d slide it down the counter, just out of reach.
Jess overheard the argument and sauntered out from the back. Clocking the wild look in my eyes, she decided to refund the boy his pita. Then, she kicked him out of the store. I’d never lost it with a customer like that, so Jess gave me a wide birth to cool down. After I had, she kindly suggested I consider taking a pregnancy test.
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In late 2021, I was sipping sparkling rosé at a wine bar on Austin’s East 7th Street and biding my time. My husband and I had been married for four years, and I was about to throw him a curveball. After spending our third date drinking whiskey cocktails and bonding about absolutely never, under any circumstances, not even in a million years wanting children, I’d changed my mind.
I figured a little vino would make him more open to the possibility of becoming a father in the next few years. The alcohol-and-ask method had worked once before. When I needed to convince Randy our second dog actually felt more like a middle child, this same setup helped me explain the merits of bringing a third fur baby into the mix. I hoped to have the same luck pushing for a tiny human.
“So, hear me out,” I started after a short lull in the conversation. “I think we should have a baby.”
His response was immediate: “Okay!” I’ll never forget the delight on his face. It could have been the wine talking, but he was definitely down. We planned to start trying in February the following year. In May, we got serious about it, and after a particularly boisterous romp on the Fourth of July, an exhausted cowgirl dismounted and declared the ride a success.
“We did it,” I said. “We made a baby.” “Yea, we did,” Randy said, distractedly. Twenty-eight days later, we realized we were right. I asked Randy if he’d really believed we conceived our baby that day or if his agreement had been shaped by the hazy afterglow of supremely enjoyable sex. He’d been serious. Together, we’d both felt the spark of new life.
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It wasn’t the first pregnancy test I’d taken, but it was the first one that was positive. I learned something interesting that day as I stood over the toilet in a cramped bathroom inside the cramped house off Westcott Street: The test is a lot quicker when you’re pregnant. No need to set a three-minute timer or endure an excruciating waiting period before the parallel lines appear. It took less than 10 seconds to confirm what I’d come to suspect after weeks of not paying attention to my already-erratic cycle.
The timing of this news could have been better. This wasn’t the only test I needed to take that day. Blue lines be damned, I had two final exams waiting for me—the first of which began in a couple hours and both of which I needed to pass to graduate with honors. There was no time to process my “oh shit” moment. I suppressed the feelings rising in my throat and rushed out the door. An unwanted pregnancy was a problem for another time.
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In a bathroom with green walls and shower tiles that looked like a watercolor painting, I stood over the toilet fingering the positive pregnancy test in my right hand. The joy I felt was remarkably tangible. In less than 40 weeks, I was going to be someone’s mama. Twelve years and three months after the first pregnancy, I was finally ready for what that meant.
Randy was still asleep, but I already knew how I was going to surprise him with the happy news. I snuck into my office to grab a hot-pink Post-It note and a teal permanent marker. Congrats! You’re going to be a Zaddy! I left the message on the coffee maker and waited, impatient like a kid on Christmas, for him to find it.
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I paced back and forth, circling Lauren while she sat on a bench outside the Carrier Dome. We’d just gone to pick up our caps and gowns for graduation, and I knew I had to call Jack ASAP. This conversation couldn’t have come at a less convenient time. We’d had a stupid drunken argument a few weeks back and weren’t talking. I wasn’t surprised to get his voicemail. Despite practicing what I would say ahead of time, my nervousness betrayed me. I sputtered out something about really needing to talk to him and hung up.
“That screamed, ‘I’m pregnant,’ didn’t it?” Lauren confirmed it did. “He definitely knows,” she said. I waited for him to call me back. It didn’t take long. Although some of my previous communications had been left on read, he couldn’t ignore the urgency bordering on panic that rang in my voice. When he called back, I cut right to the chase: I’m pregnant. I don’t think we should keep it.
The three-second pause between these two declarations stretched for eons, even to my ears. If the terse silence on the other line was palpable mid-way through, Jack’s hushed relief was unmistakable after I’d finished. He agreed an abortion would be best. We decided to split the cost, and that was that.
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When my parents made the four-and-a-half-hour drive to Syracuse, NY, from Mentor, OH, to celebrate my college graduation, I had been living in the no-man’s land of knowing I was pregnant—while also knowing I wouldn’t be for much longer—for a few weeks. I toyed with the idea of telling my parents. I knew my mom was pro-choice, and at the time, my dad hadn’t yet reversed course to an anti-choice stance.
We met for dinner at Pastabilities in downtown Syracuse the night before I was set to walk across the stage and receive my diploma. The mood was celebratory, but it felt like a good time to discuss my plans. I was confident in my decision. I knew I didn’t want to spend my post-graduate life working in the service industry and paying rent to stay in my childhood home and have my parents as roommates. This was the fate I believed would be my reality if I decided to keep the baby. I was definitely making the right choice.
The three of us ordered cocktails at the bar while we waited for our table. My dad turned the conversation to Casey Anthony. This seemed to come out of left field. Yes, the drama surrounding the disappearance and death of Anthony’s two-year-old daughter Caylee had been all over the news, but like the topic of my abortion, it wasn’t exactly dinner-appropriate chitchat. And yet, it was on my dad’s mind. The pictures of Caylee reminded him of me at that age—hazelnut hair with messy bangs and big chocolate-brown eyes. My dad couldn’t imagine anyone hurting a child in the way Caylee had been. He continued his train of thought.
“If you ever got pregnant, we’d want you to keep the baby,” he said. “We’d help you raise it.”
Over a decade later, my dad and I would be at a sports bar eating fresh-cut fries and watching the Browns lose when he repeated a version of this political talking point. That day, I’d be just intoxicated enough to reveal I’d already had an abortion. On this night, however, it took every bit of strength within me to hold the tears back and keep my voice steady. My forehead burned from the effort. Over pappardelle Bolognese, I lost my nerve. I abandoned the plan to share my situation, but the conversation shattered me. Suddenly, I felt conflicted. Jack did not.
I called him later in tears. Are we making a mistake? What if we keep it? “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, gently. He was right, of course. He had the crystalline perspective of someone whose blood wasn’t being mobbed with increasing amounts of estrogen, progesterone, and human chorionic gonadotropin hormone. Having already done his part to bring a baby to fruition, he was able to remain one step removed. All that was left to do now was his part in making it go away.
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Jack wouldn’t be accompanying me to the abortion clinic. In our last interaction, he’d jokingly handed me $400 as if it were a drug deal, trying (and failing) to make light of a heavy situation. I proceeded to hold that against him, too. He’d basically disappeared since the post-Pastabilities phone call, only reappearing for a brief walk around the neighborhood and only after I accused him of avoiding me. I was hurt by all of it.
Despite the fact that news of my forthcoming abortion had prompted no less than four women in my inner circle to share stories of their own, I still felt abandoned by the one person I believed should have been experiencing this with me. Not that he could have anyway. An abortion is the loneliest operation—even when it’s wanted—because it’s the only one where potential life is taken away. Jess generously offered to drive me to and from the procedure, but I would be going through it alone.
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At 34, I was having the type of golden pregnancy anti-choice advocates promise in the pamphlets that implore expectant mothers to carry a baby to term. Aside from some nausea in the first trimester and wicked heartburn in the final months, I seemed to skip over the horror-story symptoms many endure.
My skin glowed, my hair was thick and shiny, my nails grew to great lengths. I never once had swelling in my feet or ankles, nor did I suffer from low-back pain or lose much sleep. Not once did I have to slap a wayward hand away from my growing belly or grit my teeth through harrowing birth stories and unsolicited advice. Instead, strangers stopped me in supermarkets to shower me with compliments. My mother told me pregnancy looked good on me. “You were meant to be a mama,” she said.
I breezed through 40-and-a-half weeks, fueled by a sunny outlook and loads of gratitude. The only reminder of the path not taken previously came across the radio airwaves. On my first date with Jack, I turned up the volume to blast Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” through the speakers in his beat-up car. I belted it out boisterously, high on the energy of a great evening.
The song, which first debuted in 2009, was having a mysterious resurgence on Austin City Limits Radio in 2023. The timing felt serendipitous somehow, as if the past was being remembered and reconciled in the present. Feeling nostalgic, I sang it with the same enthusiasm.
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The night before my daughter arrived was a long one. I rode the painful waves of unpredictable contractions, timing them for more than five hours as I waited for them to fall into the 4-1-1 rhythm I was told to expect before calling the midwife. Instead of having one-minute-long contractions every four minutes for at least an hour, I’d have a 90-second contraction with a five-minute break followed by three 15-second contractions one right after the other.
Every time I began to sense a pattern, the pattern would change, and I’d be left wondering if this was early labor at all. Was I being a wimp or did this feel a lot more intense than what I’d been promised? Things weren’t supposed to get this real this fast, were they? I’d never gotten this far before. I didn’t know what to think.
Swallowing my reticence about raising the alarm too early, I asked Randy to call the midwife and explain what I was experiencing. We’d decided on an unmedicated home birth. There wasn’t anything to do or anywhere to be. When Cat said she’d pack up her car and start heading our way, I was somewhat relieved. She didn’t seem worried, so I wasn’t either. We had plenty of time.
And then suddenly, we didn’t. I got in the tub and asked Randy to time the contractions using the app he’d downloaded. After the third one, the app told us we needed to get ourselves to a hospital immediately. This was not comforting. I moved from the tub to the toilet where I could more easily rock my hips back and forth. Despite my best efforts to breathe deeply and slow the progress, the fetal ejection reflex took over. I was screaming bloody murder as my body pushed uncontrollably. The baby was coming, and Cat was still half an hour out.
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Most of my memories about the day of the abortion dissipated a few years later. I can’t recall the name of the clinic or where it was located. I don’t know what the operating room looked like or how long I was there. I don’t remember anyone’s faces.
What I remember are the insignificant details. I remember a waiting room filled with women and their male partners. I remember I had to answer questions to ensure I wasn’t being forced to terminate my pregnancy against my will and the woman who walked me through the questionnaire would later ask if I wanted one or two Vicodin ahead of the procedure.
I remember the doctor performing the D&C told me it would feel like I had a bad case of gas—did I know what that felt like?—and I was probably sad or upset or afraid, but it was all going to be OK. I remember being so angry that she kept trying to tell me how I should be feeling. I remember wishing she’d shut up because, if anything, I wanted to go inside myself instead of feeling obligated to respond to her incessant chattering.
And when it was finally over, I remember being in a recovery room with a teenager and her mom. I remember she asked about track practice and when she could get back to it. I remember all I wanted was to eat mashed potatoes and go to bed. I wasn’t sad or upset or afraid, it turns out. I wasn’t even relieved. I was simply numb and tired and already repressing what had happened so I could drive back to Ohio in a couple days and feel nothing at all.
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Nicole, the midwife’s assistant, arrived in our bathroom to find me on the toilet. She told me to reach down and feel between my legs. My daughter’s head was already part of the way out. Not wanting to have my baby on the toilet, I somehow managed to get on all-fours on the bathroom floor. Randy had covered the blue hexagonal tile with a clear shower curtain liner and approximately 15 towels.
Cat made it right on cue, entering the bathroom just as the baby was beginning to crown. A few good pushes later, our 8-pound-5-ounce baby slid into Cat’s hands and, moments later, into my arms. I hugged her to my chest. It took longer than expected for the fullness of the experience to sink in. I was exhausted and bewildered, delighted and amazed. I felt everything I’d never felt before, and I felt it all at once.
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After the abortion, I found myself back in the same bed with the extra-soft mattress and messy covers in the same cramped bedroom of the same cramped house off Westcott Street. I lazed there, thinking my thoughts and drifting dreamily in and out of consciousness. Jack called, and I let it go to voicemail. I sent him a venomous text in reply.
I wrote I had been the only woman there without a partner but everything had been taken care of, so it was fine. I wanted him to feel guilty. I had no place for my hurt, so I pushed it back on him, hoping he’d deal with it instead.
So many years later, the sharpness of the pain has softened. My woundedness is all but healed. I no longer see myself as a victim so much as I see us both as kids. We could have probably handled the whole affair a little better, but we did what we did the best we could.
Every so often, I wonder if Jack has any regrets. I wonder if he has to Google my name to remember what I look like. I wonder if he thinks of me at all. Mostly, I wonder if he’ll ever have children he actually wants with someone he truly loves. If that’s something he desires, I hope he gets the chance. Perhaps he hopes that for me too.
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These days, I live in the land of early motherhood. It is a type of fever dream, I’ve realized—one where the hours are long, but the moments are short. Thankfully, I have the world’s busiest three month old to remind me to be present and keep me on my toes.
We fill our time with made-up songs and bottles of milk, rides in the swing and roly-polies on the bed. I give her baths and she tells me stories. I wrestle against self-criticism while inhabiting a body I don’t totally recognize. She giggles and I think how silly it is to be angry with a body that grew and birthed a tiny human I adore more than life itself. I give her a million kisses a day on her chubby cheeks and baby belly and little toe beans. I tell her I love her on repeat, so much I think even the dogs are beginning to roll their eyes behind my back.
It’s OK because I’m enjoying the majority of it. Even when she gets punchy in her fists and kicky in her feet. Even when she screeches from the depths of her lungs because she hasn’t eaten in a couple hours and the situation has become extremely dire. Even when she pouts and my soul dies a little death until she smiles again.
Not every moment is one to write home about. Very few will be shared with readers, even fewer preserved in prose. The monotony of motherhood is rarely one for the books. But every so often these days with my daughter feel like poetry, and I think maybe I’ve made it after all.
KARLI PETROVIC is a writer, writing coach, and tarot reader based in Austin, Texas. She lives with her husband, daughter and three goofy hounds, one of whom will definitely be a human in his next life. Astrologically speaking, she is fully Aquarian (sun and moon), with a sexy splash of Scorpio (rising). Karli sometimes dreams in premonitions and is always choosing coffee over water. In addition to writing about sex, love, and relationships in the Yes, Misstrix newsletter (yesmisstrix.substack.com), Karli is also the one-woman team behind Cup of Sugar, an agency devoted to helping everyone access their creative superpowers (cupofsugaragency.com). You can occasionally catch her online @kpwritesherfeelings.
