Blood

(Written 1 Nov 2025, 3:00-4:30 pm.)

There is blood gushing out of me. It is copious. It used to be bright red and moved, but now in the fluid sit chunks that are dark and don't move and stare back at me from the pad in an often-soiled panty that I'll have to hand-wash in a minute, or if I'm lucky, from the toilet bowl.

I don't know what they're trying to say. Maybe that I'm not tough enough to withstand them. That instead of life I will birth incarnadine seas of stubborn, sloppy silence until biological time happens to fall in step with my intentions. They seem defiant. But so am I. Still, how much blood is one supposed to watch fall out of oneself without wondering what is left inside?

Instead of emptiness, there is pain. Physical, almost debilitating pain, the kind that makes your eyes unfocus and your mind slow. Like these words right now, unfocused and slow.

I can feel it, the blood thickly exiting. Like my body is trying to dissolve itself inside out.