Once a month... by Anangsha Haldar (19, India)

[content warning: mentions of blood]
​​
staring in to the dwindling twilight 
like an unavoidable traffic signal at the crosswalk, I feel 
it coming. 
bandaged to the side of the bed, a petty fetal semicircle  
with a heating pad enveloped in lumpy, pandemic ballooned- fat chunks. 

---

I breathe. 
breathe to see if it’s a fake dream sequence from a movie.  
intestines, needling the brain 
hormonal shards shooting anomalies  
cupid’s arrow of chemical love. 
No. 
the swathes of dried blood are indeed not a prop from a medical drama.  

I examine. 
every inch of the bedsheet, my shorts, my dad’s face for a clue to see if there are more stains.  he brings chocolate, looks of helpless appeal, more chocolate.  
he is tired, eyes want sleep, I should have endured more, chocolates and painkillers could   have waited.  
how novel an idea, a Martian concept of pain that the male anatomy can never decipher.  of blood bleeding not from wounds, not from wars, not by convention.  but war it is. somatic emotional endocrinological.  

variegated bruises bloom,  
 scanty tributaries leaving damp prints, 
 tie-dyed shapes of vaginal sap seeping into the clothes,    
into the thighs.  
 five nights in a row.  
I endure, as starry-eyed creatures’ fish in and out of consciousness. dream, the dream  of an effervesced existence, draped in dune, a pantomimist  
 staging a nightly farce   drenched in red. ​