The Comfort of Bleeding

Circa 2007. Self-explanatory.

Every twenty eight days,

belly bloated,   eyes red,

body soul exhausted

I confess my ritual wish

to my partner

With any luck,

I will start bleeding today

Every twenty eight days,

my partner nods, shakes

his head, eases me

into his arms, confesses

he still has trouble

getting used to the sound

of that

Solitaire

Too hard to put a date on this one. I started a version of it in 1993, the year my ex and I probably should have gotten divorced, and finally finished it in 2003, the year we actually got divorced. 

I sacrificed

twenty years

to be with you

At first I was captured

by the solitaire surrounding

my finger, sparkling so fiercely

I was blinded by the physical

beauty, blinded by

the promise I believed

it held

I thought we would become

One

And your love would fill

all the empty spaces

It hurt us both

when you realized

you didn’t want the life

I’d forfeited for you

when I realized

I wanted back the life

I’d surrendered to you

But after too many years of playing

solitaire in the dark ‘till 3 a.m.

then crying myself to sleep

I finally decided

to escape

the kind of solitary confinement

your love put me in

I was terrified:

I thought we would become one