i can’t get your blood out of my sheets.

my heart pounds at a mile a minute, you bite my neck, my breath catches. you are bleeding. i don’t notice. it’s all movement, sensation, warmth. you are enveloped in me who is enveloped in you. you break up with me who breaks up with you. it’s turtles all the way down when we fuck and the mystery on my lips—on the tip of my tongue—is silenced by yours.

you bleed and we notice it after, bringing dry laughter from our parched throats. science tells me it’s a monthly shedding of the uterine lining, the programmed deconstruction of the endometrium when conception fails. the body devours itself. cells slough off. a cavity chokes. an ejection, a cramp, a sigh of exhausted release.

but the science is hard to believe seeing your stains on my pillow, feeling your breath in my ear. a release, an ejection? it feels more like you have given me your blood, a gift, a stain on my belongings and on myself i can’t wash out. as your body is programmed to give it i am programmed to receive. if i could give you my blood, too, i would. i would cut myself open to reveal my fragile, destructible warmth within, my weakened heart, my veins about to burst.

a bruise forms where blood escapes from a vein torn open. where the fluid cannot break through its membrane, the skin is marred: black, purple, blue. i cherish when my neck is covered in them. i revel in the blood that never reached you. i touch myself thinking about how badly i wanted to stain you but never could.

i never got the blood out but i will try again. i will try again at 5 am the next morning, with bleach and baking soda and holy water. i will try until my veins run dry. i will try until i turn myself inside out. i will try again the next month, and the month after, and i will try until i bleed redder than you.

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