WAITING FOR MY PERIOD
SAMANTHA KENNEDY

Day 1

I pee clear, not a pink drop.

Waiting to wake in the middle of the night

To find my panties stained with

A red Rorschach test

 

Day 2

forget to eat

then binge on salty snacks

sitting in class, waiting, waiting, waiting

replaying nights I sweated beneath him

losing keys, English papers, eyelashes, fingernails

sweating into my morning coffee

 

Day 3

Praying to any God

Any anti-fertility God

Sending out desperate, frantic thoughts

into the stratosphere

knowing, possibly, I could be shackled

nursing some gummy, wrinkled thing

 

Day 4

Smoking pot with Ali,

let it slip

I’m late

what will you do?

Silence.

Drive home

Cry at red lights

And sleep in white sheets

 

Day 5

Thinking of baby names that sound good

with my last name

because

I don’t really know what he’ll do

Not really

Thinking vainly of stretch marks, sagging breasts

engorged nipples, the spread of my ass

visions of sacrificing my body on a pier

 

Day 6

Thinking about the morning after pill

But it’t s too late for that, and I know it

I realize everything hinges on memory

Doing the same thing every night for seven months

Swallow little blue pill

swallow swallow swallow

forget

feeling tight jowls of guilt

and I’m waiting with a still heart in my mouth

waiting to birth a bloody phantom of myself.