A POEM

Blood Letters

Bled by the long-ago abandoned

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Once upon a time
I bled letters
onto paper
one slow red letter
at a time

You’d think these
blood letters
would end up red
or scarlet or thereabouts

would end up
as shiny little witnesses
to my inconsolable musing
but this little-known law
of nature intervened:

Blood, especially
on white paper
(now yellowing)
once long-time dry
ends up a deep rust
verging on black

So, looking at that
long-ago bled poem now
these many years later

(I found it in a drawer
underneath an equally
forgotten book of hopes)

It looks like I painted it
letter by letter
with a fine black brush