once more a beer

Flora entered into her heat and bled all over the studio floor. She kept curling up to me in prior days - poor thing had menstrual cramps. I just let her into it and wiped up her bloody snatch when a clump had formed or when it looked like a big drip was forming.

Did you ever think you'd be wiping up your dog's bloody vagina? Luna asked.
Yes. Remember my kennel days. The dogs. Lots of bloody vagina's there. Maybe not off of the floor of your house though.
Exactly, she added.

And what a house. But by the time I had seen it, really seen it, and let it in to roost I was over it or through it or on top of it. Or somewhere else. Too close or too far to make any sense of the order of events that make up a life. Luna simply stuck through it with me, simply opened it all up. To anybody or anybody with half a mind to help. Helping consisted of showing up with regularity and staying with half a mind to stay. Half a crazed mind to accept all the pieces where and how they lay. That's survival and I wanted to learn this from the battle hardened.

Oh Rosebush, wake up. Wake up my little worm to cuddle while the cuddlin's good. Wake up my dollform.
Wake up to what?
To the real, to what is right in front of you.
I see: My hand on the trauma trigger, your hand on me. Your hand on the trauma trigger, my hand on thee. That?
Poetry, dear boy, will not supplant what you must make right.
Make right? Fuck you. My right is generations deep. It'll take two or more, just like you.
(silence)
Always silence. (silence). Always more of this silence. Death will be silent, speak now. (shame)
(silence)

At the grocer I stood in line waiting for the clerk to take back the mop head and the extra bottle of oil. When my turn arrived the man methodically went about his tasks, checking off entries, punching keyboards and working various machines with paper, pen and printer. He did this through tiny mashed hands persistent from a birth defect, through slurred speech and gawking fools. Me. I let him to it and found the consistent replacement for the returned sponge mop and bought it again. Even five bucks or an extra bottle of virgin olives made a difference, especially if I planned to drink a bottle of decent red in the evening. So after a stop at the winery and through the dirty heart of my filthy city I settled back and did just that. That's that. That's just that. That's just that then.
My Love?
(silence)