All animals have blood hearts

            Omnia animalia sanguine* corda

            All animals have blood in their hearts

 

Sanguine is no longer meaty. We have squeezed out the blood. Lobbed off ventricles and arteries to leave just an outline <3

 

Our animal hearts once bloody / bloodthirsty now tamed to optimism.

 

* Sanguine, adjective

1: marked       by       eager       hopefulness       :       confidently       optimistic

 

2: bloodred

 

3a: consisting of or relating to blood

b: bloodthirsty, sanguinary

c: accompanied by, involving, or relating to bloodshed : bloody

d: of the complexion : ruddy

4: having blood as the predominating bodily humor

 

Sanguine, noun

: a moderate to strong red

 

(12/2/24)

This morning I woke to blood. Rust and thick. The nurse said it was nothing to worry about, to call back if it turned bright red. How much of her day is filled with this forced sanguinity? Not to worry. Not to worry. Stay optimistic. Plenty of women have healthy pregnancies well into their forties.

 

(12/3/24)

Another day starts with a slight slicked smear. Pink now—not yet the meaty red I was warned of.

 

(12/4/24)

My blood-–now thick, dark. Not bright but fluid. Soaking. Pooling. My blood pools this morning. Last night my legs were striped with bruise. Blood pools under my skin. My blood cannot carry iron. I cannot carry oxygen. This blood, all washed and washing down my legs—another failure to carry. My carriage fails. I flail in the loss of my carriage. I flail and flog. Starved for oxygen. Take my meaty ventricles and shove them back in. Pushed into a shape. Formed. What cannot be formed inside me, spools down my legs. My animal heart beats. My animal carriage carries my loss. <3

 

(12/5/24)

The nurse I spoke to yesterday was somber. I have an order for bloodwork. My blood will be worked into a tube. Filled into the form of a rounded end cylinder. A piped shape, cylinder with hollow space inside. Quantities of hormone will be measured. Blood type checked. My blood continues—a slow flow. I am no longer told not to worry. My worry forms and reforms.

 

(12/6/24)

My hormones linger, elevated. My blood continues, unabated. Return in 48 hours for a retest. Another forming of blood, working. Confirmation of miscarriage. My unhinged carriage.

 

This word comes from 1640.

 

mis-, “mistakenly, wrongly or badly”

-carriage,  “means of conveyance.”

 

A softening of the Latin abortum.

 

Social policy and norms in the 1640’s called for an alternative term. Until then, all pregnancy loss was grouped as ‘abortion.’

 

Harden the softening:

 

mis-: erratum

-carriage: raeda

 

Erratum Raeda: in six movements 

I. My error carriage. An error in my carriage. My carriage cannot sustain. An injury to my carriage.

II. A wheeled carriage with off spun wheel.

III. Spin my blood into a carriage of flesh. Of tissue. The tissue that lets loose from my carriage.

IV. The blood that wheels and wheezes out of my cervix.

V. The blood and tissue that spills down my legs. My legs cannot sustain my carriage. I sink into a seat. Not a carriage seat. The seat of my couch.

VI. My carriage is filled and unfilled. Unwilled. Unwheeled. Unspooled.

 

(12/7/24)

Before this time of blood / loss, my heart went ahead. Heaved its heft and pressed against a child. My heart—now recalled. Formed back into a shape. Pressed back into my hollow.

 

Erasure source: Collar, W. C. (William Coe)., Daniell, M. Grant (Moses Grant)., Ginn and Company. (1893/1886). The beginner’s Latin book. Boston: Ginn & Company.

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Molly Akin is a writer and director of a historic library on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her chapbook, Hospice, was selected for the 2024 Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices Prize. She has read in venues including the Emily Dickinson Museum, Fine Arts Work Center, Massachusetts Poetry Festival, New England Poetry Club, and What the Universe Is.  Molly’s writing has been supported by Massachusetts Cultural Council, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Fine Arts Work Center.