When he kissed me, my mouth tasted like the steak I’d watched him cut and eat. It bled onto a white dinner plate. I disappeared
into the bathroom. I bled into a white Tampax
and thought of my father, who is a hunter, who told my mother, who is me, that animals who are alone are easier to kill.
In the fluorescent, the stitches of the dress I bought with my own money at Forever 21 were silver moons
inside their chiffon, small like the fingers that made them.
I’ve seen pictures of women sitting hip to hip in factories, sewing fabric that other women wove, sold to women who sell to women who were all on that dinner date with me.
I purchased survival buried in their nail beds. Am I guilty or alive?
When he smiled, his mouth was a fingernail clipping, half of a half of a crescent. I’ve only recently learned that there isn’t just one phase of each cycle. It circles like the moon does. When she is round, so am I.
I am wearing what other women bleed for. I am bleeding inside what other women bled to make— all this red that isn’t death, but could be.
-- Katey Funderburgh is a current undergraduate student at Regis University, studying English and Peace & Justice. She identifies as a bisexual woman. As a self-proclaimed poet, her work explores feminism, nature, belonging, love, and lineage. She has been published previously in the Red Cedar Review and Loophole magazine.