First Blood

they say that today we drink the same water our ancestors drank,

that the air we breath too filled their lungs as they hunted and gathered by fire.

does this mean that this blood in my body is the same the flowed from my ancestors’ wounds?

is this red wave cresting with each cycle of the moon the same

that birthed a thousand daughters and sons?

i remember my first bleed,

the strange hot wetness filling my garments.

i was blessed with early education in the matters of the female body;

i should have been prepared.

but how can you ever be ready to experience the very power of life itself?

i ran to my mother after cleaning myself,

fingers fumbling with tissue and menstrual pad wrappings.

she kept her voice as calm as she could;

“Congratulations. You are a woman.”

but i saw the bloom of fear in her eyes.

i saw her jaw set with a kind of fierce protection and

at the same time, resignation:

my fate in this world already decided.

i told no one of this crossing into womanhood.

i waited for friends to share first.

“It’s gross,” says one boy.

“It feels weird,” confesses another girl.

“So painful.”

“How inconvenient.”

“Does this mean I’ll get pregnant?”

all these inherited stories, steeped in narratives withheld from us,

stories of power and pleasure;

but only a rare few of us would ever experience them.

today, I smile upon that maiden-turned-woman.

with a lightness free from terror, I welcome her with open arms

back into the fold of millions of women, hundreds of generations.

she belongs with us, now.

our matriarchy blesses her flowering womb with the same gifts they received at their first blood.

whatever slings they craft to constrain us,

whatever arrows they carve to pin us down,

they cannot break this link;

the unbroken lineage of life-bearers who channel the mysteries

of the universe Herself.

Written May 2024 in celebration of Beltane