Bloodletting

you let the blood go. getting to the vein, is the only painful part.  

blood leaving the body does not hurt. 

like menstrual blood, pulled out by 

gravity and the moon.  the actual blood itself pumps warm and forward. 

i could hear it fill

 tube after tiny tube. i relaxed into it. my own blood sacrifice, 

my offering to self.

this act, of priestess, of the old temple. blood for life. blood for fecundity.

        on the cusp of a new season.

my arm shook. i couldn't stop the adrenaline flowing from earlier that morning, the worry the fear

the rubber tourniquet quivered as i held my arm straight,vein up.  

tube after tube. then a memory shook me.

a dream from the night before and a long tube, blood flowing out. painless, as the chalice filled, white robes, my nest and my calling.

afterward, i felt altered. never faint or squeamish. my blood ritual produced a trance and a state of euphoria. i've

given the energy of my struggle. a transformation, an initiation. 

i rested, lighter than before, and marveled at the ease of letting go.

then the fatigue and headache that put me in bed, as if to say: 

'slow to the rhythm of your own heart beat. listen as the cool blue sky thrums overhead...

this is all you will know now. this is all you need know.'

a few days later, my moon, my blood arrived, slick between my labia. a quiet dripping at first, then a loud storm of pain, no medicine could touch.

more bloodletting. under a full harvest moon. more sacrifice. limits of the body.

a drained body, a slow body. a body of intensities and vertigo. 

down for days trying to stop the tilting of the universe. 

i say the words for winter ... of red snow, basins of syrupy fluid, a squirrel's missing tail ... 

as it all swarms, anemic. needing a blood broth. yellow dock and molasses. 

two yellow eggs. 

and my body. wrapped in green donegal wool.