nosebleed, 6:45 a.m., brighton (a tone poem)

I pinch the bridge of my nose and utter a low, resigned “Fuuuuuck,” as I stuff a chunk of toilet paper under the left nostril and let it absorb warm blood. I’m out of proper tissues and have just come out of the bathroom, standing in the half-light of dawn coming through the kitchen window, in loose-hanging pajama pants and undershirt. Hoping for a clot. Knowing one will come eventually, but wanting it fucking now because I’m tired and I can afford to get some extra sleep because I can work from home in the morning and I’m supposed to be enjoying that, goddamnit. Not this.

A lyric fragment reverberates in my head and I think I might cry, but don’t: “Lost out, beat up/Dancin’ down there.” Instead I try to speed the clotting process by grabbing some frozen aluminum-wrapped leftovers and pressing them against my nose.

Could be worse. Was worse moments ago, when I had the unique sensation of vomit and blood leaving my body at the same time, which, let me tell you, is a fuckin rush.

That wastes-leaving-your-body-simultaneously feeling also leads you to wonder on a macro level about where we’re all gonna end up. Perhaps as the universe’s detritus, landing in the toilet bowl of a beige/brown/off-white apartment bathroom as the universe hunches over it and spews things that discolor the water in garish fashion.

The blood is particularly warm. The running sensation is both awful and invigorating. I still have blood left to lose. Yet it’s mostly saddening: Why, oh why must I lose it now?

Could be way worse. In 4th grade, two days before Christmas, my nose bled for over four hours, ridding me of more than a fifth of my body’s available blood, requiring three cauterizations, almost needing a fourth from a machine not typically used on children. The blood wouldn’t stop. I was so scared. I can remember thinking I’d die, that I would never stop bleeding till I ran out. I remember wondering, in perhaps the earliest rumbling of darker thoughts to come, if that’s what was supposed to happen.

This is not that. I know it’s not. This is waking in a panic after some indeterminate dream and fearing the future — for myself and my scattered damaged family and the ones I love. This is anxiety and the nosebleed is coincidental. This is a bout of loneliness that I will fight off. But the blood rushes and won’t clot right now, and the right-now is the place of terror.

Another lyric comes, echoing around my brain since yesterday: “We’re surrounded by the fuckin wolves.”

In moments such as this I fear they can smell my blood.