Challenging Poetry

waiting for blood

it’s raining,
and I creak and crack—
my fingers ache,
warming their way into usefulness.

once upon a time,
my body never failed.
I could play
across a hopscotch board
without feeling the weight
of my bones.

in the sun, my hair caught fire
gleaming auburn
with no ghost strands
streaking white
across the red.

and my blood flowed clear
and stayed within my veins
and I never stayed,
meter in hand,
waiting for a glucose reading—

as my fingers warm enough
to bleed when I prick them,
and I contemplate blood’s color
and taste its rusted sugar flavor
and mourn.

line count: 25

When I started thinking about Rust, the prompt for the first day of poetry from "Dew Drop Inn" , at first I didn't think I was going to get here. I thought about a cat we had when I was little. His name was Rusty, named after my great-grandfather, Russell, because Mom had always liked the name, and her mother didn't because she had a fairly awful relationship with her father (same man, my mother's, mother's father). So, instead, she named the cat Russell, and we called him Rusty. Which feels like a place where a poem could emerge, particularly if I started thinking about mothers and stuff . . .

but, instead, I started thinking about how rust looks and then the fact that it's red because of the oxidation effect, and then I thought about the fact that blood is red because of the same oxidation effect . . . and then I thought about diabetes and the fact that I check my blood sugar a lot and I never used to and now that I'm forty I'm starting to creak and my hair has this white streak down the front that only shows if I pull it back (which I do when I'm trying to prove that I'm forty) and the front door needs oiling because it creaks so loudly when it moves at all, which is all because of rust, and when I added all those things together . . .

this poem happened.