La Luna y Mi Sangre (The Moon and my Blood)

I’m bleeding today and I’m remembering my power. I’m bleeding today and I’m remembering my body. These days my eyes are falling softer on my reflection in the mirror. Every now and then, I fall into spells where I betray myself and my body with deep discontent, wishing and pleading it to be different. I think (I hope) I’m coming out of this spell. The bathroom I use has long mirrors that extend from the corner of the intersecting walls allowing me to see myself from all angles. I like the line that curves down my back and how I can see the swell of my breasts outlined when I turn slightly to the side. My champagne colored waist beads accentuate the womanly contours of my body and I feel sexy and ravishing like the ripe, tropical fruits that have become an ample part of my diet here in Colombia.

Each moon, my blood teaches me something different. Each moon brings with it, it’s own gifts. This moon has me feeling deep, wading in cobalt and midnight blue waters. It feels like the beach at night. Have you ever been? The ocean is most powerful when the sun says goodnight and the waves become wild women. They claw at the shore, frothing as they roar and hiss into the darkness. These are their prayers to the moon, their one and only goddess.

Red and ruby root me and glow from the center of my chest. I am reigning in my sovereignty. I am reigning in the space and protection I have created for myself after experiencing a violation of touch against my very body. The subtly of the progressions that led to these happenings makes it all the more insidious. I am owed an apology that I will most likely not receive. So I will apologize to myself for ignoring what my body was telling me when it first felt uncomfortable from the actions of another. Like many women, I said nothing at first trying to give the benefit of the doubt. But my body screamed and screamed until I finally listened, until I finally decreed a boundary. How do I ask my body’s forgiveness for making her scream just for me to save her?

Never again, my love.

No es tu culpa, my love.

My body screamed and my blood began to flow and I felt a release. My blood began to flow and I felt euphoria. It radiated across my pelvis feeling how the moon’s light shimmers on the ocean at night. I knew she had arrived without seeing anything as she pulled me into her warmth. In the bathroom on the cotton cloth, there was brown and burgundy and I smiled. These are the holy waters here to anoint me. The holy waters that release and cleanse me so I can begin anew.

How my cup runneth over. My cup runneth over and my fingers are stained as if I’ve eaten cherries and pomegranates each time I reach into myself, into my pink flesh warm and soft and dripping. I hold my cup and watch my blood drip down the sides feeling as if I hold the world in my hands. I tilt the silicone chalice and watch my blood take on new life blooming and billowing in the waters below, before it settles like some underwater field of poppies. My blood is not cursed. My blood is not unclean. But it is my power.

And I do want to scream. I want to scream not to be saved but because I can. I want to scream because I know my power. I want to scream as a warning like a lion stalking around the gold grass of the savanna. Like the ocean waves praying at night. I want to scream into a face but for now I smile a dangerous, deceptive smile and I peer into his uncomfortable eyes darting from mine as he squirms in his sins. I sit like a queen on her throne looking down at him with pity and divine scorn. I bleed.

And I wonder, if Christ can bleed out and be praised for his blood, why can’t I?

If Christ’s blood is purifying, why isn’t mine?

Please come to the table… it is lit with candles and scattered with broken passionfruit and roses. Here is my flesh. I give you permission to feast on it in remembrance of me. I pour out my blood, a symbol of my power and my inner, mystical world. Whoever eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood with permission will alchemize into love and the paradise of their wildest dreams. Whoever eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood who is unworthy and impure sins against himself and brings judgement upon himself. So I say to you be careful, because the waves do not forget. And the moon will always know.