Eggshells

In spite of myself, I am killing myself

Coursing and crushing and grinding myself

My eggshells are broken, decanted, thrown out

My blood itself pouring and clumping as small bouts of anguish and pain come attacking my abdomen

Oh, woman

Your little martyrdom lives

I eat, I speak, I drink, I sleep

And still I am washing away

I give life with my mind through my heart and my hands

And still I am still giving way

My body is feeling and quietly stealing or maybe more loudly it's telling me lies

I eat, I speak, I drink, I sleep

And still I am dying inside

Monthly, monthly, this must go on

The grieving embattled one must now walk on through these fields of lost chances, mortality, weakness

Bleakness

Lovely

Because it is ours

Oh woman, your little martyrdom lives

On in the lives of half of the world

Through all of the mothers and each little girl

All of the aunts and sisters and nuns

Experience battle, they run as you run

Together, onward, into a new day

A new seed planted and new soil sown

Beautiful, beautiful, bodies that bleed

Bosoms of suffering, bosoms that read:

Here there is death, but what follows is life

Oh, woman

Yours is a beautiful strife