Red Moon Rising

At first she was a thief—

crept in without knocking,

stained my only white skirt,

left me curled on the bathroom floor—

a question mark nobody answered.

I called her curse.

Called her dirty.

Called her why me

every twenty-eight days, a sentence

I never agreed to serve.

She was pain with a face I couldn’t slap,

a voice that screamed you’re still not pregnant

in the language of clots and cramps.

I bled through sheets, through shame,

through every plan I tried to keep.

Then—

two blue lines.

She quieted,

stepped back like a midwife

who had done her part

and now would watch.

My belly swelled like a moon she once pulled;

I felt her in the flutter,

first kick—

a knock from the inside

saying you were built for this.

The life inside me

sketched meridian scars across my skin;

I wear them still,

map-lines of his beginning.

When I screamed him into being

she was the white-hot bellow of each contraction,

the tide that would not turn—

an old friend who knew

pain could be a doorway.

Years passed.

She came and went

with less fire, less fury.

I stopped cursing her name,

started whispering see you next month

as if checking in on someone

I used to hate

but now just knew too well.

Now—

silence.

Calendar blank.

No red moon rising.

I miss her.

Not the pain,

but the promise.

Not the blood,

but the still bleeding.

She was the first to know

when I lost one,

the first to say try again.

She was the last to leave

when my body became

a house with the lights turned off.

I rest a hand on the quiet skin

she once lit like a forge,

and I swear I feel her—

a small tug inward,

like the ghost of a cramp,

familiar, almost welcome.

Goodbye, old friend.

You were never gentle,

but you were mine.

I am what you made:

a woman who learned to love

the thing that taught her

how to bleed without breaking.

_________________

This poem is the story of many women's experiences with their mesntrual cycles - a constant companion we never wanted, never invited to stay, but eventually come to know well and even begin to miss once it's gone.