Alyssa Cooper
Day 23 on the theme of Blood

The first boy who ever loved me had skin as white as a paper,
and pinprick scars across his chest
that I turned to constellations with my dancing fingertips.
I have never bled for anyone the way that I bled for him,
and in the dead of night, when the world is soft and quiet,
I find myself hoping that the same is true for him.

We loved like a burning building,
with ravenous tongues of flame taking hold of everything in sight,
swallowing down support beams without thought for the consequences,
insatiable,
until our bones were blackened and we found ourselves breathing smoke,
flustered and confused in a pile of ash that had once been a home,
and in my shaking hand,
was a match.

We loved like a battlefield,
gaining ground by greedy inches, and clinging to the muddy, broken earth.
I took to the field with my hair in Valkyrie braids,
with my soft flesh unarmoured,
so desperate to hold onto him that I clamped his lips between my teeth
and I swallowed the salted blood that landed on my tongue –
and I like to think that it lives there, still,
those precious drops of him,
still coursing through my veins.

It was always blood, with us;
the blood of kisses with too much teeth,
blood leaking under my skin in brutal purple flowers,
so violent in our adoration that we were left battered and bruised
every time that we touched.
There was no time to consider how long it would take those scars to fade,
no time to count the days it took for the blood pooling in my throat
to leach back into my veins.
It was over in an instant,
and with the pain of separation came the realization of the knife
that I held in my own hand.

It was always blood, with us.

There is always blood,
when beautiful things are born.