WOmenarche

The truck stop toilet bowl

Swirls red

Empties with a whoosh.

Why was it red, Mommy?

Mommies bleed sometimes.

Does it hurt?

Where does it come from, Mommy?

It looked like kool-aid. Giggles.

You’ll learn all about it someday.

And me?

Not you. Just mommies.

Oh.

Nine years later—

Capsized by a wave of hormones

Baptism by blood

I am the fountain

I am the flood

I am…back in diapers?

No, thank you!

This is a mutiny!

At day’s exhausted end I

Brush my teeth, brush my hair,

Scrub iron-rich stains from underwear,

So focused I forget to look in the rearview mirror,

Miss my last glimpse of carefree girlhood.

I miss my body. The one that fit.

For whom this bloody sacrifice?

Certainly not for me.

This woman’s body is cranky and clumsy

And sore and doesn’t fit.

It leaks! A terrible design.

Having lived by the sun,

I’m now chained to the moon,

A mysterious red moon somewhere in my belly

That will drip down my legs

Like melted strawberry popsicle

Thirteen times a year.

If I’m lucky.

For how long?

Forty years, maybe.

Forty!

Panties in the sink 500 times?

I didn’t sign up for this!

You look nice, he says. Is that perfume?

That shade looks unnatural, she says,

I don’t like your tone.

As if I am marooned by choice.

And you’re a lady now? pries granny.

I am.

The boys were fun, she remembers.

Nothing serious, just friends,

But we went to the beach and I couldn’t…

I dearly loved to swim.

It’s our whispered secret:

This lady business is not all grand.

Cramps—

On hikes and bikes and airplanes,

Church pews, carousels.

Bleeding through sleeping bags, guest sheets,

McDonald’s napkins in a pinch.

Crimson blotches on the soap bar.

Rolling engorged and sweaty pads into stinking snails

And burying them in the wastebasket.

I know my roommate’s blood by pungent scent

Uncowed by candles, soaps, or sprays.

She must know mine?

(Does it attract or repulse predators, I wonder?)

Discreet, we never discuss

But when we bleed we take the elevator,

A small monthly indulgence.

Undeterred by calendars

Blood intrudes on

Parties,

Vacations,

Holidays,

Honeymoon.

My lovers were never squeamish

So why,

When I long to bathe a sword in blood,

Am I too shy to ask?

At long last I am ready to put

This program that has hummed steadily

In the background so long

To its use: a portal

To communicate with the future.

Red-hot hope fixed on

A water balloon in my belly

Spills out again in

Pools of liquid disappointment.

My moon is defective,

Its tides too strong.

Are we to be forever marooned in the present?

And then it holds!

Waxes full! Its tides raise a mountain and

From a mighty crevasse bursts new life, lusty and strong.

Blood flows like lava, slows, and is replaced by yellow drops as

Golden as new motherhood.

Before the tides can resume,

Another mountain, another earthquake,

A squirming pink treasure

With squinty eyes, rosebud mouth,

And a slit that oozes pink stain in the doll-sized diaper,

Practice for when she will sync with a moon,

Twelve years hence.

Son cries against the bathroom door.

Inside, I sit over a bowl of kool-aid and clots,

Shaky with relief. I rest my hands

On my thighs as milk lets down.

Gratitude flowing.

Everything leaking at once, salty and sweet.

Twenty years down. Twenty to go.

The toilet paper is gone.

Of course it is.

  

-J. Lofland

7/8/2020