"Catch of Time"

LEVENSCYCLUS
(an excerpt)

*

I wanted to write my way back to health

because the procedure lasted 30 minutes
          but I was still bleeding months after

I bled all over the city I lived in and would live in

There’s nothing about this that is metaphorical

I bled as I walked home, down the long street
that would become a promenade, past the abstract
sculptures and investment fund offices

I bled as I emailed my colleague to tell her
I was sorry to miss the day’s meeting

I bled as I considered whether I could make
the meeting after all, all I had to do was sit there
and pretend I wasn’t bleeding

I bled the next day while hosting the scholar
from New York, I bled while he talked about poetry
and Dutch landscape paintings

I bled shopping for groceries on the street named
for nightingales, I bled biking through a park
named after a queen, I bled taking my children
to hockey practice at a club that called itself
a small Indonesian village, I bled drinking wine
at a café that called itself a courthouse, I bled
having dinner at a restaurant with an imperial
Japanese name, I bled buying a bike in a complex
where everything had to have an “in” in its name

I bled in multiple bookstores, I bled while making
photocopies, I was still bleeding when I won
a research grant, I still bled when my son
got into the high school he wanted, the one
behind the hospital where he was born 12 years
earlier, I bled while we both celebrated, I bled while
grading essays, I bled while strolling past tables
of beer and unwanted junk from household
cupboards all in the name of the king’s birthday

I bled on Zoom, Teams, Webex and Skype, I bled
while giving readings of poems on losing and ending
pregnancies, and I was still bleeding while describing
these poems as if they held long-ago memories

It was the movie set version of a memory

It had to be a memory because I had to know
already I would never regret it, I knew already
I would never regret it, in my darkest moments
I would rather bleed forever than force another
child into this world just to witness it burn down

It had to be a memory because I had to know
no one thought I had reason for regret
I knew already I had no reason for regret

I bled as I read about the surrogate mothers
in Ukraine who had to be pregnant and give
birth amidst war, unable to deliver the babies
to the parents waiting in the U.S. and China
I bled as I read the Supreme Court opinion
overturning what I had learned as long-past
history, I bled as I read opinion after opinion
even by those who lived and would live only
in the Netherlands, they were right it could
happen anywhere, I was still bleeding when
I stopped breathing in the Rotterdam station
on the way to Oxford to read poems on lost
and ended pregnancies, I was still bleeding when
I stopped breathing, but still I would rather
bleed forever, I knew I had no reason for regret

I bled as I stood in a seminar room built into
an old military complex, teaching Whitman’s poem
“I hear America singing,” I bled as I read the lines
about the “delicious singing of the mother,
or of the young wife at work,
or of the girl sewing or washing,
/ Each singing what belongs to him or her
and to none else,” and talked to the students
about reproductive labor, I felt my own uterus
expanding and contracting like Whitman’s verse
and thought, even if it all falls out of me now
and here, I have to get to the end of this class

During the break I went to the toilet and wiped
the blood off my thighs with disintegrating paper
and tied my sweater around my waist, I went
to the nearest supermarket and bought more maxi
pads and packages of cookies, I told my students
I was sorry I took a longer break than usual but I
wanted to get them a treat, I knew already
I needed to write my way back to health

I bled all over the city I lived in and would live in

but I thought the fact that I bled could be kept
clenched in my head, I wrapped myself in another
reality where no regret means no reason to wonder

My body, my choice, my own private problem
a piece of property in the center of the city

There was nothing about this that was metaphorical

*