Issue of Blood

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Last night she lay in bed and read the men’s words while blood flowed
            and spread like a petal, pooled and ached, red as stymied truth.

Every woman from twelve to sixty could have told them life is
            mutable, if they would have asked her—a flutter, a gush, a
            screaming love

Born and born and born again. The bloody mess of life and death
            transmuting every twenty-eight to thirty-two days. She could
            have said

Take this my body, a thousand times over, moaned to all the
            potentialities and loss that grew inside her sometimes bodied,

sometimes round as her story ending. Each month reminding her of
            this blood a covenant which is poured out for many. But they were
            asleep again

in the garden or climbing another mountain in search of
            finch or flaming bush. Classifying, prophesying with I am always before
            them

Her, a broken open alabaster jar filled with the precious ointment of life
                  and death, anointing and blessing, anointing and

There are three alternate endings to her story:

 1.She smells of unused spices and silent fear
 2.She says only what he tells her to say
 3.She bears all and they don’t believe her

A woman bled for twelve years without ceasing, in seconds, she
            became miracle.
A dead twelve-year-old girl rose up and pooled her life in her own
            new hands.
Still they said blood is unclean and death is death. Ending number
            three then.

The good news is we are intimates with liquidity.
The good news is that the ground has never been solid.
The good news is all these stories are only old strands of thought.

 4.The widow tosses her small copper coins. This is but the beginning
of birth pangs.