Raisin

I wake up to your moaning while releasing yourself in the bathroom without bothering to run the faucet or the shower, and a slick stream gushes out from deep inside me, not a normal period, but a deluge that started yesterday after a dry patch of three months, the blood returning with vengeance when I was in the middle of a Zoom work meeting, the warm river soaking and staining the pleather chair, making me run to the half-bath, stuff wads of toilet paper into my underwear, then sprint to our daughter’s room for sanitary supplies, rush to my closet for fresh panties, stick two pads for maximum coverage, message my boss for a sick day, the cramps ravaging my body, the abdominal muscles clenching and unclenching, reminiscent of the time our daughter was born, when you held my hand, when you still cared, before things started to change between us, before my body betrayed me/us by refusing to sustain another fertilized ovum, wrecking your hopes for a boy, before the endless fertility treatments, my depression, your dwindling patience, our daughter’s aloofness, before our happiness existed only in photos, like the one from the Disney vacation on my desk, before the migraines marred my existence, before I took a leave of absence from work, before I was unable to drive our daughter to tennis or watch TV with you in our bedroom, the flickering light creeping under my sleep mask, stabbing my eyeballs, before your feigned consideration by watching our show with the headphones on, then your clucking at my thrashing in the bed and finally your pressing the remote off, wrapping our shared blanket around your body like a cocoon, before you started traveling for work, the two-day client meetings extending into week-long conferences, your returning home, all cheery and bright, with a smile and a tune on your lips, before that Saturday at the carwash when you moved the passenger seat for vacuuming, and I spotted a tube of lipstick on the floor, the gold-rimmed cover way more expensive-looking than my pharmacy store ones; you shrugged, said it must belong to a colleague who rode with you to a business lunch, asked me to toss it in the trash, but I pressed the sweaty wax on my skin, the raisin exactly the shade of my soaked pads.