IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK

Another Bloodletting

A poem

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I guess this pain is good
like bleeding is a sign of life,
and I didn’t even think I could do that anymore.

But even when I sustained literal cuts
from another, the way you didn’t call
me after hurt deeper than that knife.

The wounds she left only ever draw
this venous, clotty, chronic blood;
It never kills, but still, I never heal.

I’m forever leaving its trace behind —
red spots and red lines mark the places
I’ve been, and for so long now,
nobody even acknowledges them.

So, to feel a sharp and sudden stab,
the acute and arterial type,
and side by side a blunt-force gut punch —
well, somehow, it felt familiar to me.

It’s in the way I didn’t see it coming
because I didn’t look,
the way I felt a deep nostalgia when the pressure sank,
and oh, how it bled like love leaving way too soon.