Britney

“If, therefore, men’s blood is not to be spilt in vain, the blood of a virgin must flow. It must be virgin blood, or, as the sacrificers proclaim as they go about their work, ‘pure blood’…to animalize the doomed virgins.” —Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman, by Nicole Loraux.

“She has no choice / She has no choice when she reads.

*

All reading is blood.” —“The Book of Repulsive Women,” by Carrie Lorig.

“CHORUS: Brave girl.
KASSANDRA: People never say that to a lucky person, do they?” —Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, translation by Anne Carson.

My notebook says:

addle platelet girl / asphyxiate my thighs
and you’re the bad sign / and it’s your best friend / and it’s your
girlfriend / they’ll bleed you
I was here first! I am your curse!

Among other things. Boys are constantly trying to drain me of my plasma. I avoid them through hibernation. They do not understand the path to my cave of recovery—the lack of breadcrumbs hardened by age’s touch, no platelet girls to lead them, the noose of hair, the wine-stained dirt sprinkled with herbs for purification.

And the worst of them want my spleen. I hear one of them upon approach, the dulled knife for removal cloaked in his fuzzed words, and immediately the temptation of Samael shoots down my turrets and I am trapped under the rumble. Under my guise, I am clogged by his Robitussin slip. The room offers no antidote.

Into the nest I settle like molasses. My mouth is a bitter cave thick with the cake of ash.

***

Reading about women’s deaths has opened up my pores to the tragedy of any demise in my life. I disregard.

Men arise from the woodwork, armored guards gone rogue. I discharge.

I think about the despair that has laced my life for over a year. I give the thoughts to the abscess. I disengage.

The trees reach up. I cry out. ♦