a poem about blood and ice cream and god/s - Juliette Humphreys

may god curse the dinosaur that died to make the fossil fuel that was treated to become petrol in the car that took my mom to the hospital the morning of my birth

the blood was never beautiful

I could call it suffocating, warm, dreadful, messy, sticky but it was just red.

and the nurse wiped it off but I am still drenched

stuck to my mothers heartbeat booming in my ears as if I never left

and I am still covered in blood but unsure if it’s still mine

I’ve only ever known love as an act of keeping track

Monitoring the pints of blood in and out of us

Living within one another but never knowing them

And I wish I was healed before you met me

Didn’t have to hear the screams of painfully hot, boiling showers and watch the red stream down into the drain

Just for me to still be stained, covered in the crimson

One day I will let the blood dry and scab

And one day you will be shy around my new surface

Let’s pretend I am normal for a summer

As a reminder that it is not too hard to love me

Not an uphill boulder as much as strawberry ice cream

Not everyday but sweet, strange and special

For you.

Is there a cure?

A sort of catholic cauterization to make the blood stop running

where being alive would stop being so embarrassing

where blood would seep into cloth like a warm hug

where we singe my soul into shape where the prayer works wonders and the dinosaurs never died and we all lived in harmony

christened as something normal

as someone you might want to know

someone you would still want to hold through the night.