Ode to the belated arrival of my blood

 

What a joy to find you in my pants.

Red and pale and shy

You are making yourself known

And with that a relief

(whispers) Relax

welcome the mess

The smell

The cravings for the carbs

The tired limbs and bones

 

And the barren womb.

 

At 45 

I do not wish for another child.

 

I have no longing for the smell of newborn skin

Or the weight of a baby on my chest

Or the tiny hand grasping mine

 

My days of longing to and striving to procreate

Are gone:

I am at the cusp of another tone

 

Soon the moon will pass me by

My pool diminished

As my daughters step into theirs.

 

Soon the pads I buy will be 

for them and them alone

My trousers will be clean

My pants unstained

My skin dry

And my hair crisp

And my body

Moving

 

From woman to crone

My bones already bending twigs in the wind

 

 

I move 

My heart flutters

A sharp intake of breath

This cramp sends through me.

 

She arrives,

Pale red smears,

A pain pulling my insides,

Holding liquid in my tissue,

Dreams of pools,

Sticky and dark.

 

She messes up our house,

She splatters in red

(who would have thought

So little blood

Makes such a mess)

A Moon cup full

Enough to give visions 

of childbirth

Or abortion

Or murder.

 

She drips into 

Beds and baths. 

Onto feet or floors.

She catches me out

And makes me hunt in panic

For 

Sanitary pads

And public loos,

Disables me for days

Curls me up

On and in blankets,

Clutching a hot water bottles

While watching mind numbing TV

and howling 

into 

my ice cream bucket.

 

Fiercely I love her.

 

She frees me from that other:

The mindless nausea,

The bone draining effort of making another

The possibility of being 

A birthing machine.

 

My body is still 

Sending sex hormone.

On my fertile days,

Letting the world know

We can still do it.

We still make eggs

And look at that strength to carry them.

 

My body has its agenda,

Yet I am settled in my skin.

My heart and soul and mind

(aren’t we the authority ?)

Are celebrating 

our planned children

the freedom to pursue our path

our joy and our desire to be this kind of parent 

and that kind of partner

To step lightly on the Earth

To listen to our own desires

And give room for the creative spark

To find expression elsewhere.

 

And so I celebrate 

The blood that tells me

I am not pregnant.

The blood that depletes me and defeats me

With pains and lumps and stains and gains

The blood that gives me

My freedom to pursue

That gives me

Room to define

As other then mother

 

I celebrate My Red River.

It is my mothers.

It is my mothers mothers.

 

Each month I let go of another egg

Made by my mother

For me.

I let it go

And cry for it in the stillness 

of the stretched and contracting fibers of my womb,

Because some of our dreams 

Were never meant to come true

And some of our ancient bodies wisdom 

Saw days when 

we made many

to see the few survive.

I cry because 

I love what is.

I HAVE A CHOICE.

 

I defend it

even 

from what might be.

The weight of death 

 

The weight of death,

A price to pay

So strange and sudden:

Here -

The body changed.

It turns to gold,

Cold and heavy, 

The symbol

Of all the love we shared,

Of all the laughter flowing

From your madness or mine,

Your joy 

Or 

The sun leaving patterns 

On the rug.

 

The weight of death,

A stiffness in the flesh -

No longer flesh inviting

To be held,

To be felt,

To be knelt at in deep wonder.

 

The weight of death,

A load not to be shrugged off,

But shared 

In hushed whispers,

Hands pressing lightly,

Eyes silently falling 

Into the well of love.

All Human

 

 

I am the silence filler,

I am the babbling brook,

The secret spiller,

The inquisitive look.

 

I am the enthusiast,

The creative,

The expressive,

The welcomer,

The accepter.

 

I am the talker

The lecturer

The hair splitter

The detail giver

The attention seeker.

 

I am the argument Fiddler,

The manipulator.

 

I am the pleaser,

And feeler,

The barometer.

 

I am the ignorer,

The overwhelmer.

The underwhelmer.

The delusional.

And the selfish egomaniac.

 

I am the lover and the cheat.

I am the flirt and the friend.

I am the loyal and the charming,

The one in service and in peace.

 

I am the sensitive and the vulnerable.

The exhausted and the ill. 

I am the depleted.

The crippled.

 

I am the healer of my wounds.

I am the healer of this body.

 

I am the speaker of some truths,

The finder of the problem,

The seer of solutions.

 

I am the facilitator of this journey

And that conflict.

 

I am the hidder and the hidden. 

I am the seeker and the sought.

I am the singer and the song

And the ear that has to listen, 

Wants to listen,

Wants silence.

 

I am the pebble and the pond,

I am the wave, the froth, the ocean.

I am the carrot and the stick

And I am quick, a proper brick.

 

I am the beauty and the beast

And the endless sleep of death.

 

I am the courage and the fear

Of rejection, of acceptance, 

Of my own greatness,

Of what it means to step up

And into

All that I could 

And can

And would

And will.

 

I am the grass 

And the foot walking on it.

I am the stone in your shoe

And the stick in your hand.

I am the mirror in the lake

That will embrace you with cold silk.

 

I am my mother, your mother, the mother

And the best dad in the world.

 

I am the star

And all that empty space.

 

I am the hater and the hated,

I am the slag, the slut, the cunt

And also the cock, the dick,

The fuck.

 

I am the abuser and the abused,

The victim and the perpetrator,

The hurter and the wound

That festers and pusses, 

or heals beautifully with or without

Leaving

A scar.

 

I am the memory 

And the one who remembers.

I am the history and the historian.

I am the changer of the path,

The buck that stops here,

The fork in the road,

The dead end.

 

I am the stubborn and the lazy,

The gentle and the fierce.

I am the loving and the angry,

The controller and the controlled.

 

I am the power, known and unknown,

Desired and detested,

Needed and rejected.

 

I am the judge and the jury

And the quivering accused.

I am the defender of the ones

Who need defending

And of the ones who don’t, 

As well.

 

I am the picker of the nits,

The rectifier of wrongs,

The analyser of symptoms,

The speaker up,

The blurter out, 

The reluctant leader.

 

The meek,

The kind,

The daring,

The forgiving,

The open,

The exuberant,

The understanding,

The Devine.

 

The one who just wants to be loved.

 

I am the battle of the mind

About the importance of this and that,

Truth versus connection,

What is right versus other people’s feelings 

Of rejection,

Pain versus freedom,

Risk versus exposure. 

 

I am the taker of this bull by its horns,

The stroker of its head,

The self pity wallower 

All curled up in bed.

 

I am the depressed and depressing,

I am uplifting and uplifted,

Fun and games,

And ready to steal horses.

I am the ignorer of my needs,

The meeter of my needs,

The calm, the breeze, the storm.

 

I come from love, 

I seek love, 

I fall in love a lot.

I am all human, a melting pot.

I give it my best shot.

Or not.