Direct Pressure
Mar 6 2009


Direct pressure
works
for knife wounds
gun-shots
shaving accidents.

Blood is surprisingly hot.
It thickens fast,
and sticks to fabrics, to walls;
washing them off
over and over.

There is nothing more intimate than this —
your unfocused eyes;
your cool skin
pale, waxen;
and both my hands
immersed in your blood,
sinking into you
encrusted in thickening clot.
I can feel your pulse
fast, then failing,
your life
fading away from my grasp.
Your relentlessly pumping heart.
Your lungs, sucking tireless.
And your thin translucent skin,
keeping you in
keeping the world at bay.

We are leaky vessels,
we bleed out quick.
We only persist
by the thickness of skin,
by our cleverness and wit,
by the kindness
of total strangers.
But there is only so much
we can learn to cauterize —
the tiny wounds, the repeated cuts
that puncture
our skin
our hearts;
the words
that pass right through us.

I feel the awkwardness
of nowhere to put my hands,
brown and stiff with blood.
I slowly get up,
hoping hard scrubbing
will wash it all off
eventually.