Blood Rituals

Gather this tide of skirts,
streaming thighs, restless hips,
cotton blotched into maps,
drip-drip of first arrivals,
coming, going, staining, crossing,
striding in endless motions,
in whispers, in warnings, in shrieks
hidden behind bathroom doors.

A red seam pools at the ankle,
a stubborn stain snaking through linen,
the body spilling its hidden harvest,
a metal tang of rusted iron,
threading through seams,
of drowned dark petals.

This is the ritual:
to bleed and keep moving,
to mark and be scrubbed clean,
to carry the sea inside,
month after month,
both burden and blessing.

by Salmah Salam