Rid of Red

One-step-ahead red:

When I turned 13 and gained a sinister follower, a sinewy river always coursing just beyond the bend

Of calendar invites trips and events that I needed to remain spotless for and rising up to ruin.

Just one swim in the pool? Not with this lier-in-wait.

The red I’d dread

Standing up too soon, red flooding into my cheeks as well, my face hot

Encircled by a sisterhood who gathered around, shielding me from view and spiriting me away.

The out-of-my-head red, in bed

As I’d writhe and rage as my body twisted and churned

Too edgy, high-strung, too easily stung

Rising to anger over a word that rubbed me wrong, my voice shattered the sky and birds rocketed out of trees.

Vile words. A waste of a day.

Red- then nothing instead. She fed

My babies deep inside, she grew gentle.

She left me alone. I trusted her

As they quietly feasted, encapsulated in the home she made for them.

She was protective then. She grew those babies as big and strong as babies could be.

She was the very best at everything she did, on each spectrum: the brilliant competence of her job and the pain she rendered otherwise.

And then: almost-dead red?

I bled

And I began to wonder, after decades, if

Deep inside, something invisible yet pernicious

Grew where life once bloomed.

What paradox, that?

My daughters: three flowers from hidden pink buds to now fiery foliage

Tall and strong and slender

Now that I’m done with all that, what if

That dark place missed something growing, but chose a small death instead

That will only grow, like babies, but unknown now to me?

I feel her weight pulling me down to the ground.

So I retired red. I put her to bed,

And she did not go without a fight.

She’d been destroyed before: cut and sliced to make way for children

And boasted battle scars from which now she stubbornly clung, the parasite.

I even tried to burn her out. She’d been scraped and ligated. She felt my hate.

But I took her down at last, and imagined them lifting her out of me like another baby

Laid out like a captured octopus, tendrils on either side, slick and wrecked and gone

Stripped of her power, her broken frailty in death belied her strength: home of humans, center of womanhood, ruler of my life as the moon phases ruled hers.

So now red has fled and

Tomorrow I’ll go to the pool, and I won’t know what day it is.

I may even wear white.