Katie Eleanor

You count fifty-eight days at The O and the nectar in Lovelight’s blood remains abnormally low, it will not stick to the walls when she throws it. ‘Your blood must be sticky,’ they tell her, ‘harvested by red-eyed bees who sing in a high-pitched siren song. You will drip it back onto your own tongue, and it will sustain you.’ 

Lovelight with the long tongue, sucking on her prescription of sugar cubes. 

Each week they let fifteen vials of blood from The Body in three appointments. You are taken to the third floor, (discoloured blinds, a tooth shaped window looks out onto a wall), and The Body is licked and kissed and stabbed and measured and measured and measured and measured. They tell you it is ‘the work’. They tell you it is ‘the work’ while taking five fresh vials.

The Hares have a therapist named A, you see her for your third class on a Monday. A is forever in The O in her body, but never in her mind. Today she is dressed like a flame, she is the warmth of my Lover’s fireplace. I give her my heart and bite my finger until it bleeds, but this blood is all mine and not for The O, I have salvaged it from the vials. H stands up and says her existence embodies a disease.

Later in the summer: The haematoma on the back of my right thigh has seemingly found a permanent home. Dead swollen blood loving me, clotting. I fell down the stairs, I was delirious, but I was not running. I keep her safe. I will not let them take her and put her in a vial, my sweet haematoma. There is sugar I smell in the air on the train, I refuse to stick out my long tongue.