Anna
IT DOESN’T LAST LONG AT all, and yet it lasts longer than perhaps it should.
It was only an instinct, really. It’s just to be sure that no blood spilled onto the floor.
It’s just that she wants to look after me.
Just that I want to bleed onto her tongue.
It’s just to feel close, as close friends should.
To feel control. My heart hammering so fast that it might shatter.
I tense my hand, which stops Betty. Shameful, to stop such a shameful thing.
She does not allow herself to be embarrassed, and just for a second, I let my hand fall on Betty’s cheek, leaving a moment of blood there.
To feel close. To feel control. And then I go to the sink, alone, to wrap my fingers in a rag.
How frightening it is to feel. For a long time after you, I felt like a bruise.
Suddenly, she has reminded me that I am freely flowing blood.
It would be impossibly difficult to pretend that it didn’t happen. And we don’t. There are practical ways of explaining it away. Maternal ways, carnal ways, romantic ways. So many ways that no matter how we look at it, it loses its original meaning.
I am disappointed to realise that there is nothing left in the world to feel after I have felt the pulsing suction of her mouth. Surely there is nothing left in the world to taste now that she has tasted my blood. A quare thing, an unspoken, shared thing.
One animal looking after another.
Something that has been bubbling inside of me for the longest time has suddenly boiled over.
It’s an injury I sought to cure with you.
With Aoife Murray, Milly Hayes, Catherine Jennings.
It is the shrill cries of a fox, waking you up from a dream.
It is a horse’s hoof, firmly planted on your neck.
It is a local woman, sucking your blood.
It is this: the astonishing joy of a woman’s unbridled, unfiltered attention.
Something I’ve so rarely known, something I now have a personal source for.
Already I need another dose of it. Of her.
What other ugly things can I do to get her to pour her affection into me like that?
Oh, what a troublesome thrill. Not even god could touch me now.