Blood Letting
In my mind's eye I see nothing but blood.
Blood that drips between legs
And fills the toilet bowl instead of pee
It is the insides letting themselves out
Clamouring to be seen, the violence evident
In every drop that spills onto pad and pantie and
Pants. Enough of powder and puff, time to play
With some real truths, of what I am from within.
I kept it all in, and now it drips from every orifice
It begins from the vagina, and it will spurt soon from
Navel and nose, who knows how long it will take
For me to die even as I live in the spill.
The blood shouts as my voice grows silent,
This had to come out, you cannot hide forever
The flesh is not a mask that holds on forever.
Abha Iyengar's work has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Dead Drunk Dublin, Danse Macabre, The Fabulist and others. Her book of poems,Yearnings has been published (2010). She has a flash fiction collection,Flash Bites, on Smashwords (2011). She is recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Writing Fellowship for 2009-10.
In my mind's eye I see nothing but blood.
Blood that drips between legs
And fills the toilet bowl instead of pee
It is the insides letting themselves out
Clamouring to be seen, the violence evident
In every drop that spills onto pad and pantie and
Pants. Enough of powder and puff, time to play
With some real truths, of what I am from within.
I kept it all in, and now it drips from every orifice
It begins from the vagina, and it will spurt soon from
Navel and nose, who knows how long it will take
For me to die even as I live in the spill.
The blood shouts as my voice grows silent,
This had to come out, you cannot hide forever
The flesh is not a mask that holds on forever.
Abha Iyengar's work has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Dead Drunk Dublin, Danse Macabre, The Fabulist and others. Her book of poems,Yearnings has been published (2010). She has a flash fiction collection,Flash Bites, on Smashwords (2011). She is recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Writing Fellowship for 2009-10.