Wendy Allen

            I hide the tampon within my fingers 

            like I’m holding a tiny, fragile bird.

            Someone once told me this is how 

            my hands should be when I run.

            On the side of an unstained trainer’s edge 

            is a star. In red. On the edge.

            I think of the tiny celestial mark I draw

            in ink on my calendar, always inconspicuous.

            I pretend to look for my phone, pen, a date

            two weeks later. Inside my bag, a yellow wrapper

            the colour of cruel. A creased spring dress

            worn only to celebrate bloodshed.

            I whisper period to you

            in the hope you will turn around.

            You don’t. I shout it out 

            28 times aloud in my head.

            When I empty my Mooncup, the blood

            remains crescent lonely in the daytime bowl.

            I like the absolute discomfort 

            this causes you.

            I envy the plastic backed sanitary sleeping 

            bodies on their unfamiliar coastal beds,

            their one-night stand leaving them free 

            for me to feel their single use guilt.

            A naked tampon in the cervix of my bag

            is exposed only by a useless string lifeline,

            the wrapper from the orange tampon 

            flatlines at the bottom of my bag.