Blood

Blood. Oh, how she loathed that word. How conflicting it was. The image of the glistening scarlet fluid etched in her mind tormented her. The substance that flowed through the living but reminded her of nothing but torture and misery. That elixir jogged her memory of agony. As simple as the gentle prick of a needle. The fluid drained out of innocents and martyrs in wars and political unrest.

She pictured the crimson rivers flowing with soldiers’ remains. Her knee, wounded when she fell off her bike. The shame society burdened her with when blood marked her womanhood. The ancient proverb: "Blood is thicker than water" and how it confined people to their unloving families.

She was enraged that blood did not just transport the vitals but also carried lethal maladies.

The horrid recurring vision of her father’s ghastly corpse drained from it. Walls drenched. Killer’s hands stained.

Her eyes dried up wells, aching to see him again.

As her melancholy deepened, she realized that her father was still alive, coursing through her veins. Blood nourished her, kept her breathing, living, miserable but still among the living. Has blood become her new favorite word?

Paper cut, blood blister, nosebleed. Back to square one. She forced her eyes shut and murmured: “Blood creates life; births the future.'' She took the deepest breath, but her thoughts spared her no mercy. “ Coedes videtur significare sanguinem et ferrum.”Slaughter means blood and iron. And as she strained herself, one last time, to think positively, she felt her breath slip away. As her brain drifted into an eternal slumber, she managed to conjure one final thought: how ironic it was that her aplastic anemia, a deadly blood condition, had cost her her life.