The backs of my hands bled. First it was in school, when I dug my nails into them to avoid a far worse type of pain. I would stand in front of the boys during choir, so afraid and trembling, and the pain would help me focus on what I could control, and not what I couldn’t. My eyes smarted and stung, but if I could hurt myself enough I could keep it together. The marks took several periods to fade. Only once did I leave thin pale lines across the underside of my wrist. The broken picture frame glass I used was jagged and mean, but it was an inanimate object and I was the cruel one. It burned for days after and I did not like it, because it was a pain I could not control, that I had let get away and out of hand. In grade school we had rubbed ballpoint pens across paper so fast the tips turned white hot and touched them to our hands, the skin bubbling up in protest. Cardboard was worse and I used it to prove myself, one of the boys. When I was pregnant, later, my knuckles turned red and scabby from the cold air outside and the burning hot water in the work kitchens, a combination of opposites designed to tear me apart and leave me wounded and raw. The doctor at my appointment asked him to leave the room so they could ask if he was hurting me. He wasn’t, not like that, though when our opposites ended I ended up just as damaged as my hands had been. It was the only winter my hands broke themselves apart, and now each November I watch for the warning signs and worry the pain might return.

When I gave birth I tore, and there was so much pain and so much blood the locations and amounts didn’t seem to matter, just variables in one big mess. My stitches caught and reopened later, and I barely hobbled myself back into the office for relief. It felt as though the world was ending, all of time and space protesting against continuing where life usually began. I cried hot, bitter tears because the pain was supposed to be over now, I had given birth; no one talked about what happened after. The focus is on the sacrifice of the delivery, and then after it is only about how you are tired and how much she sleeps, your body is seen only when it can provide something for others. After the birth you are given pillows worth of cotton and a squeegee bottle, for nine months have been wasted and there is much to purge. You bleed and you bleed and you wonder how you can still be alive when so much has been taken, and everything seems gone.

I know that bleeding is an everyday part of my life, that the biological system was not set up to be fair or equitable and each month I am required to shove cardboard or plastic in swelled, sensitive places and feel exhausted, moody, and uncomfortable. It is an unstable time, when dams can burst at any moment and rivers flood, where sometimes things are a terrifying thick and bright red and other times they are a worryingly dull brown. My body was meant to bleed and ache and bloat and the side effects of doing something about it can sometimes outweigh an already miserable week. Pills give headaches and chills, changes in temperament and enjoyment, and the exhaustion of recovery only yields to the dread that the process will repeat soon. I am never aware of when it is coming, only always guessing soon, each attempt to track and record the monthly occurrences stops under the depressive conditions of counting down days till your own torture. I wait in arrested limbo, sometimes worrying the thing I hate most is not coming, somehow even worse, and only after I have begun to bleed do I understand there has been a reason for the pain and confusion of the past couple days. I cramp, and nothing matters, I must accept my body was built to betray me, that even my only purpose as a woman is not made for me to cherish or enjoy, only for others who don’t have to deal with me.

Politicians vote to regulate my access and control as if this is something I asked for, something I wanted. They take each and every option from me because they have never needed it, never considered how different their lives might be if they did. I bleed for them to ignore my bleeding; the fact of life no one wants to talk about or acknowledge. An everyday biological function of half of our population is graphic; [girls under fifteen clean up crime scenes that would be rated-R if shown on screens] an explosion of blood Rated-R many girls under the age of fifteen clean up daily. Somehow we are not traumatized for life, or maybe we are, but life has been built around accepting this occurrence as necessary and not ridiculous. I am cursed to hurt, no matter which aspect of my womanhood I focus on, internal or external, red painted nails and red water, sheets hastily stuffed in washers because the crime I have committed is being alive.

I bled after sex once, in a clean hotel room under my favorite blue nightgown, smears almost to my knees. I do not remember feeling pain or even anger at him; I had wanted it, had not noticed getting it was hurting me. I do not know if it even hurt, or if my body simply could not keep up with the rest of me. I was embarrassed, apologetic, upset; how dare I bleed on him. How dare I not be able to control my own internal organs, how dare I not present as perfect and willing and un-messy, when loving someone is the messiest human expression of all. I cleaned myself in the bathroom and he knocked and asked if I was alright. I wasn’t, because I was worried about him. There is no scenario in which the woman can win, for whatever insecurities and flaws he has not noticed she keeps track of herself, waiting for them to be found and hated. She has an artist’s eye for detail and a critic’s skill at explanation, but she hones these talents only on herself. It is more than brutal honesty for oneself that keeps her pruning at eyebrows and ripping wax away without a shred of sympathy. It is biased, untempered examination of one part, no consideration for the whole, no moment to find balance. We bleed ourselves dry.

Anna Kaye-Rogers has been published in Illinois Valley Community College River Currents, The Feminine Collective, Eastern Iowa Review, Zoetic Press Non-Binary Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Pen 2 Paper, HCE Review, The Stirling Spoon, The Coil, Coffin Bell Journal, Zimbell House Publishing, Buddy Lit Zine, Digging Through the Fat, The Nasiona, IO Literary Journal, and The Write Launch.She received the Editor’s Choice Award in Non-Fiction in Northern Illinois University Towers 2017. Upcoming work will be featured in SERIAL Pulp, The Dollhouse, and Likely Red Press. She studies English, Creative Writing, and Professional Communications at Northern Illinois University.