Blood Letting
An inconvenient occurrence among those with a thin skin.
Today bloodletting maybe? Not much — razor on leg — even a delicate touch results in a stream of red running down the bone of my calves’ thinner skin — so vulnerable this stretched veneer, hardly sufficient to hold back 8 pints of the stuff… What if I pressed harder?
The rivulet opens thought channels though — rouses me with a call from the deep.
Outside the air is soft fragrance all blooming as I step out and pass a riot of pink flowers spilling high over a wall. The route is familiar yet, I’ve never seen them before — Wisteria leaves with pink flowers grafted from some exotic hybrid species, half trumpet, half rose, calling out shyly: “look at me, look at me”.
Abundant day — a day to heed the red call — give myself to the whim of the town just for an hour…
Here are street cleaners on the way home, clattering metal dogs carrying packages, children’s’ screams, the raucous cries of gulls. The mildest of October days, still magical — limned with light, edged with crystal sea — wrapped with possibility…
Seven years on — nothing’s changed, but me.
What is it with our species — liquids sloshing around bone armatures, wrapped with tissue — that we feel compelled to keep moving on up?
In the autumn of my life, I have Become. I have it all, I have arrived. I can say I am Happy.
Yet — as the blood runs and the cut widens, the chink in my constructed carapace opens wide enough to shout:
“Look at me! Look at me…”
