These are the things that will make you bleed.
A nail that you step on.
It will gush out of your sandal like spilled paint, spreading quickly.
The angry thorn of a rose bush.
A tiny red dot that grows into a shiny globe
before you get it to the warm comfort of your mouth.
A slap across the face that catches your nose just so.
The metallic, salty taste dripping down to your lip so you'll lick it.
Look in the mirror as pitifully as you feel.
The gravel driveway when it rises up to meet you.
Cities of grit embedded in ravines of meat on your knees
must be flooded by bubbling white peroxide.
A nightmare that makes you roll out of bed and bang your head.
Then it is spurting in little pulses by your eye.
You will need stitches. There will be a scar.
A rock thrown straight up to the Heavens will come straight back down
and cut your head, your hair, your skull will show.
You must glue your flesh back together.
Cruel words, hateful and stinging, open deep wounds that don't show.
Untold violations, confusing and frightening, make every vessel in your body leak.
Measuring yourself, your friends, the world, by any reasonable standard
is a fountain of crimson, accusing and convicting all of us of wrong.
Even the very center of you can open up a spring - always during class - smearing your chair, staining your clothes, and the shame seeps through you and you are sure you're red from head to toe. The tide of blood pulls at you. The undertow threatens to drag you under.
You find pins that prick
The gleaming fascination of kitchen knives
The slanted crotch of scissors to pinch your papery skin
And finally, the holy razor blade.
It opens up an eye in your wrist.
Then another. And another.
Surely you can see into the Spirit World now
with all these eyes
in tidy, bleeding rows,
surgical and straight
covered up to heal
then opened again with precision.
You control the bleeding.
You control the pain.
You have a secret that you chose yourself.
Whatever makes you bleed has power,
So you will claim that power.
The agonized sweat of Jesus
came in great drops of blood.
And he surrendered to it.
And he overcame by rising from the dead.
(c) Tasha Cheney 2018