blood-drawing needles leave crescent-shaped wounds.
crackleplastic covering the not-soft mattress which holds me aloft, sacrificial gazelle beneath buzzing flourescent lights. impartial falsecheerful nurse who disregards my assertions that i've bled this way before.
a little sting, honey, and that's all.
i watch the needle. i always watch the needle; i think it's a stickypainproving akin to the way i walk across subway grates despitebecauseof my residual fear that they will collapse beneath me. i watch the needle nestle beneath my skin, licking into my shy veins, slaking a monotonous vampiric thirst.
then a quiet stomachclench before the only part of the process which truly twinges a psychological dischord:
there is a small tube attached to the needle, which they tape down across your wrist, fleshy side up resting precariously on the edge of the pallet and leading to fist, prepared to squeeze intermittantly on the small plastic cylinder provided for that purpose. a heartbeat after the needle comes to rest inside your vein, the first crimson swishes through that tube. across your wrist, and thence to the bag which will hold, at end, a pint of lifeblood.
across your wrist, where you can feel the warmth of that life leaving you, rushing from the relative containment of skin and flesh where it belongs, where it belongs, and becoming an anonymous number to be entered at the tone.
you saved three lives today.
and hold that tight to my chest, pull it into my undeluged heart and use it in place of the pint of me left sloshing about in that strange plastic bag and four test tubes.
crackleplastic covering the not-soft mattress which holds me aloft, sacrificial gazelle beneath buzzing flourescent lights. impartial falsecheerful nurse who disregards my assertions that i've bled this way before.
a little sting, honey, and that's all.
i watch the needle. i always watch the needle; i think it's a stickypainproving akin to the way i walk across subway grates despitebecauseof my residual fear that they will collapse beneath me. i watch the needle nestle beneath my skin, licking into my shy veins, slaking a monotonous vampiric thirst.
then a quiet stomachclench before the only part of the process which truly twinges a psychological dischord:
there is a small tube attached to the needle, which they tape down across your wrist, fleshy side up resting precariously on the edge of the pallet and leading to fist, prepared to squeeze intermittantly on the small plastic cylinder provided for that purpose. a heartbeat after the needle comes to rest inside your vein, the first crimson swishes through that tube. across your wrist, and thence to the bag which will hold, at end, a pint of lifeblood.
across your wrist, where you can feel the warmth of that life leaving you, rushing from the relative containment of skin and flesh where it belongs, where it belongs, and becoming an anonymous number to be entered at the tone.
you saved three lives today.
and hold that tight to my chest, pull it into my undeluged heart and use it in place of the pint of me left sloshing about in that strange plastic bag and four test tubes.