Menstruation Inspires Sports Metaphors

I see it in slow motion like the fist of a boxer rippling the face of a foe.

My blood on the shower floor is thick and human,
Syrup would be the common way to describe it.
I see it pulsing, ocean water tapped into tide pools, too alive with life unnoticed and accumulating.

I don’t describe it a word to you even though you ask
because I dream in stunted sentences
and tender curiosities

self editing in R.E.M.
about what running down the clock might give us,
if our attention spans endure.

It’s the season for layering,
a hay day for weaving,

and I’m struck with the urge to tie it all up

and leave it at your door.

It’s up.
I’m up.
Sometimes too ‘up’ is a criticism you give.

‘Conserve energy’ you counsel,
but it’s hard to tell when we deliver real criticisms except about Silver Lake solipsisms and working too much.

Am I to be made harder/better/faster/stronger or am I a place to rest your fear?

The days feel like a variation on the theme,

and if you’d have asked me to map it I’d probably have said waiting was central, accented by muscling through, and loved ones cheering from the sidelines as I fumble the final quarter.

The final quarter has fumbled me. The rules have changed mid play.
I don’t feel like I’m waiting even though I am. The tide pool has a last gasp as the water recedes. The payoff of waiting is surviving.

The love squad isn’t cheering, they’re hopping in the ring.

Something is seeping out of me even as I wait. Practice is giving life without thinking about it, and I am taking the air out of my own lungs for this room. Cleverly answering questions posed by my own blood, which I have proved here is just another thing of play for

gladiators of instinct

women of the world today.