Blood moves me from the bedroom
to the bathroom, my body pulled
away from the crescent of my husband
in ended eclipse, and my toes tent
on the tile as I pleat the warm cloth
over my hips. Each cycle shapes
its own new stain, the irregular edges
of wetness sinking into dryer thread,
and even now I am still startled
to discover the appearance of my private
self, the red moon announcing me
as if my own face. Twilight spills shadows
over the old wood floors. In Juárez,
seven more are dead as I wash the dis-
charge from my underwear, a field
in which some men played soccer
sinking in with human weight. I wring
the cloth, pull the string. Do what
I must. The women of Juárez are used
to dropping to their knees while the sky
in El Paso kaleidoscopes loudly through
windows. In our house, my man
expires into the brown right angle
of his elbow. In grass, another woman
stops breathing. Her husband’s mouth
is stitched into the seams of his own
soccer ball, his rest perpetual only
to the plumb line of the moon, and between
countries, two wives move: one from
blood, the other, towards, our ribs
compressing our cardinal hearts, our lovers’
faces reddening in pivoting light.
