I've Seen a Lot of Blood

I've Seen A Lot Of Blood

I've seen a lot of blood in my time. When the world was still black and white, I watched as my father bled out the deer he had killed off The Mountain. The blood the streamed and pooled like tar but the smell was of the hot iron train tracks I liked to walk. I'm here to tell you that the saying about chickens with their heads cut off is true. I saw my grandmother take her chickens to a tree stump and cut off their heads with one swing of her axe. The chickens got up and ran around spewing blood from their necks and it looked like oil spurting from an oil well.

When I took the axe to my father back in the shed where we kept firewood, a black gash opened above his eye and you know how a head wound can bleed. He wasn't much hurt though; just needed a few stitches. But this rash act sealed my fate and I ended up in St. Andrews Home for Screwed Up Children even though my father deserved that axe. I tried to tell that to the social workers and lawyers and the court but no one was listening. They just said You Are Very Lucky You Didn't End Up In Jail.

When the world turned from black and white into color it wasn't a sudden thing like the Wizard of Oz but more like a sunrise. There were hints of pink on the high places and gradually over several days the whole world was filled with color. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. Like a photographer will often choose to take pictures in black and white, the world lost a certain artistic integrity when it turned to color but it picked up a certain excitement. Science cannot account for the change in the world; is it a change in the actual world; a change in human perception; or a change in my imagination? I had not imagined that blood could be so red.

I make love to my girlfriend even when she is on her menses. The first time she said, I won't do this for you. I said that's OK; I wasn't expecting it. But was this a metaphor for the whole relationship? Or am I merely being clever?