good trill hunting

I thought getting your period

meant the end had started.

I imagined women walking around

quietly hemorrhaging through grocery stores,

through office meetings and funerals.

I thought eventually

a woman simply emptied herself out.

That death arrived slowly,

not with violence,

but with a stain blooming wider and wider

until there was nothing left inside her.

And the terrible thing is…

I wasn’t entirely wrong.

Not literally.

The body is kinder than that.

The body knows how to clot,

how to replenish,

how to begin again every month

without dying.

But the world?

The world still asks women to bleed.

Bleed patience

when a man interrupts her

and she calls it communication.

Bleed softness

until her edges dissolve enough

to be called likable.

Bleed beauty from pores and wallets and hunger,

waxing herself bare like an offering.

Bleed apologies

for taking up space

she was born already occupying.

Bleed ambition, carefully…

not enough to threaten,

not too little to disappear.

Bleed years into jobs

that call her emotional

for noticing her own exhaustion.

A woman bleeds every time

she swallows rage whole.

Every time she laughs

to soften a no.

Every time she turns herself

into something consumable

so the world will not punish her

for being difficult to digest.

I used to think women died from blood loss.

Now I think some women die

from being asked to give

and give

and give

until they cannot remember

what was taken

and what was volunteered.

Still…

every month the body says

here is proof.

I survived another cycle.

And maybe that is womanhood too.

Not the bleeding itself,

but the impossible miracle