Stretched over a couple months 
I am 
tired 
pissed-off 
I stopped falling asleep 
Blood lines my uterus for the benefit 
and the comfort  
of everything that's making me 
tired 
pissed-off but I'm not  
squirming in any deadlock 
deadline. 
I'm not buckling like some kind of pussy. 
Concerned; maybe, but certainly not a damn thing I could articulate.  
In me, I feel 
my insides turning and raging against the vessel.  
 
At work, head of shipping says blood acts up 
under stress. 
 
"Sometimes you get nosebleeds. And  
sometimes your brain slaps your tubes around so damn hard they  
know,  
I swear they just know, to turn off the tap 
and let you slap the shit out of some scumbag 
or pay your bills or, in your case 
Dana, confront that dirty 
asshole about his Thursdays with that desperate,  
waning, intellectual girl, without 
having to deal with blood in your pants." 
 
I pull my mother from the living room and tell her I want the room with the stirrups. She 
frowns in this way that reminds me of  
how she was before she started dieting. 
"Anything I should worry about?" 
 
"No." 
 
Then I add in my head 
as I often add in my head 
You know what, Mams? I think the blood likes my lousy uterus.  
I think it stays in there because it knows that out 
here, I'm tired and pissed-off and not falling asleep. It's 
a white flag with every clean pair of panties.   
 
The blood on that dirty asshole's broken, gnarled hands  
is reason enough  
to speculate 
that what I am looking for is perhaps 
not lost. Only 
shining favorably elsewhere. 
 
Either that or I am pregnant.  
What a load of shit that would 
be.