My ******
A black hole
******* in
My body
Each month
Nonsense
Painful agony
Undeserved and pointless
Mental and physical
Punishment for women

You first showed up when I was ten.
I knew who you were but I didn’t want to know you.
I’d read about you in books. Forbidden books.  
How could I explain to my mother that I already knew your name?
I expected you later and I hated you already.

You provided me with the key to a secret club
A place of shame and disgrace.
I wasn’t allowed to talk about you.
A pact of silence between members

Mother said you might make me feel unwell
That was an understatement.
Iron spikes drove through my insides
Steel bars wrapped around me
Spears ****** down my legs.
All I knew was pain
A white-hot, blank-space hurt filling every crevice of my body.

Do you remember that time on the climbing frame with friends?  
I should have been a carefree child but I was dragging a heavy, aching body across the bars.
Or that time I collapsed at school
Head down on the desk, my body could give no more
The school nurse accusing me of faking it.  Telling me you weren’t that bad.  A good friend, really.

Or how about the time you showed up at work.
Made your presence known to everyone
It was described as careless destruction of corporate property
Leaving me humiliated, wages docked to pay for the chair you destroyed.
My inability to control you, a professional failure.
And the other club members offered no sympathy.

You were my constant companion of misery
I didn’t dare attend that party, go on that trip, take that promotion…
You were always waiting around a corner.
And so I withdrew
It became just you and I.  As you wanted.
Defeated. You had won.

Twenty-two years, I suffered in your grip
Twenty-two years of screaming into pillows; body and mind dissolving into agony
But I found a way back.
Suppressed you with chemicals.  I finally discovered me without you.
The person I was supposed to be.

Ten years I have lived without you
Ten years of rebuilding my life, relationships and career.  
I never realised how much control you had
Until that time that I was free.  I emerged.
From a sea of despair. Head now above the deep darkness
I can breathe.

She could talk endlessly about
the way her gut the way her whole abdomen
pulses for just a few days each month
agonisingly cruelly internally she bleeds
she bleeds she bleeds she bleeds

She’ll write an article about a girl she knew
who stuffed toilet paper from the college bathroom
into her underwear because and she’ll quote
“it’s better than nothing” she eats one meal a day
at home and that is it

She’ll do a speech about how the
contraceptive pill can do psychological damage
she’ll mention the time her best friend
asked if Cilest is meant to make you
want to **** yourself
“At least her boyfriend is happy” she’ll say and
the audience will laugh as if it is a joke.

She’ll ask her manager if she can go
home because her *** is giving her
blurred vision and she is struggling to stand and
he’ll ask why this month is any
different to the others

She’ll ask you if you think it’s
fair that shedding lining costs money that
contraception costs sanity that pain is
only valid if you’re dying and
you’ll tell her to stop being gross and
she’ll say Only when you start listening.

In monsoon period
the gray clouds release a lot
flooding the riverbeds.

So you say PINK is the color of BLUE
Blue meaning me and You
Blood and tears sweat sadness from fears
I am full
Yet we are empty
Maybe it's just me

I'm a pink period monster
Who death had begun her

Death of Innocence
'Death of Silence
Death of Normalcy

Because between you and me
We can be free
PINK, red
Ice BLUE to undead

bara tubuhku
satu nafas, tikaman di perut
tapi bukan dari luar
bukan dari luar

cairan menjelma jadi belati
satu tegukan ramuan rempah sakti
rimpang agung warisan bumi pertiwi
jemari kuning si mbok hadir membukti
hangat jamu kuning pekat nan wangi
meresap, dinding terkikis
rasanya jantung diri digenggam keji

kini terlepas dari ragaku
sebegini ampuhnya
hingga ia menyerah luruh
sewaktu-waktu berdalih biasa saja
itu hanya gumpalan darah biasa
tidak ada yamg mengambil jiwa secara paksa
maklumkanlah
tubuhnya saja belum terbentuk sempurna
itu hanya gumpalan darah biasa

Everything you own is covered in blood.
     They arrive on moments composed of crumpled paper, tired and degraded by the heat and pressure of God's palm, left in Her pocket too long. ******* and apathetic inaction meet in the center of the sheet where your pelvis, your s e x rests while you sleep and lie and lie and sleep and sleep and lie. A Rorschach blot card where you see the death of dignity. Mother, Roommate, and Tinder Dates that you never bring home see everything that they had hoped you weren't.

     Cochina. Pig, ******* pig.

     And I can't read that last verse out loud. That tells you everything you need to know.

Everything you own is covered in blood.
     You bleed when you don't feel enough, or when what you feel isn't what you ought to feel--silly ******* scholarship with the brains and the championed cheek bones (if you just lost the weight, she says to herself sometimes, and her friends don't agree, but there is a deafening lack of disagreement that takes the room).

     Bold girl who never made suicide jokes because she was so so so good at this game called self love until she wasn't. Until she ran out of bad ***** juice. Until she felt the weight of it, the world.

     And so you choose to feel the bite of an exacto knife.

Reliable, that.
Pleasurable, that.
Guilty, guilty pleasure.
Shameful pleasure.

     We were supposed to be grown up, glowed up. Above this.

                                                  **** this.

     When did it become so hard to love yourself?