eating your heart out, etc.

once a month i take a care of my disgusting little body, the strongest organ in it pulling punches about the other guts as if it's the king of the castle, and i suppose it very well is. i suppose it might as well control me. i suppose i might as well be rooted from my core.

i cosplay as a slip-and-fall life-alert scenario, going to the gynecologist in the shower with myself. my heels are up in the stirrups and my back is in the basin. i sleep writhing under water that beats against my pink-flesh nerve.

i do understand that it's the natural way; that bodies were built like this and regardless of my lack of use for it, this system has done great and marvelous things (and also made me, to continue, for what that's worth).

but it begins to point out a terrible weakness about me, that i cannot keep down food without wretching it up - just as i begin to enjoy it, this harshly moon-faced time comes around - and i cannot ignore the pain that so many others do (don't they? they must).

medication, the cautious and much-urged stipulation; caffeine and the killing of the pain.

as if my uterus, the vessel of but a few trickling tablespoons of ichor, should laugh at my predicament, and double itself over in a mirth that only serves to further cause me anguish. it keeps the blood above the napkin and dispenses of exactly that which it please.

my organs are shifting and unsetting, moving into places i don't recognize them. even as i never see bloating, my lack of a stomach bunches together now to make a paunch.

nothing in me. nothing in me. nothing in me but blood.

my legs are set a-jiggering. my thighs feel faint and my body gyrates (uncomfortable, impossible sexuality in sweatpants and slippers) as i hold myself up, angled, against the wall.

i hang over doom like over-ripened fruit. i give nothing of myself, and i get all this.

and the gynecologist himself gave up when he saw it, my minor opening too small to be worthy of his time. next time, he said, and stick something else in there in the meantime.

once i almost tried.

nothing bad. nothing big.

i don't have to self-mutilate, because it nearabout does that for me. torn apart, i am i am.

and tomorrow i'll teach, put blithely back together again. what cruel blessing and trick, that it should only come today. that my body is not enough, so it must be purposed at alternate times. that i could only imagine, and shrink from the fright, to see this out in its designated end.

oh, and i do thank god.