IUD

If I'm not bleeding with the moon, what am I bleeding with?

There is a chaos in my womb that does not follow
any cycle I've heard of.
Blood breaks through and stains all my underwear.

On and off for 10 years

hormones interrupting hormones.

Cycles of birth control pills wane

turn new moon empty

and are filled again.

A medicated plastic ring

inserted intravaginally every 4 weeks.

A foreign body tied with fishing wire. 

All this so that I could live the life

my foremothers could not.

Consensual pregnancy, wanted sex,

for this I have subverted tidal cycles.

I started having sex the same year I started teaching sex education. 

I remember my first annual at 14, 

laughing with the nurse practitioner,

lying on my back.

It was an unnecessary exam,

studies have shown.

It was an unnecessary exam

but I had no other rituals

with which to mark my transformation.

When I began attending births

and being with those who also attend births, 

they said

why would you want to pour chemicals into your body?

For years (cis) (men) (allies) had talked about the havoc

my choices were wreaking 

on the reproductive systems of fish.

Now these gentle women said,

don't you want to bleed with the moon?

don't you want to be natural?

Ovulate on the full.

Bleed on the new. 

My body has become a disordered system.

If I am a woman who bleeds with the moon
and ovulates once a month, sister,
but I am not bleeding or ovulating now,
am I still a woman then?

( your binary doesn't work for me ) 

If my naturality is fixed to a given hormonal cycle

and I choose to alter or change the inner workings of my body,
am I unnatural then? 

( your constructions don't work for me )

My blood is the blood of unstable earth.

I put in an IUD because it was good sense.

Now, I have reveled in highs and lows.

The rhythmic turnings of an ancient system.

I wrote it all down,

found ritual in diva cups, 

hot water bottles, cramp bark, red raspberry leaf.

I lusted in ovulation

and turned my lovers red tent red.

But both jobs don't pay the rent

and I was just in the middle of doing something,

I, was, I just 

needed something 

else to come between me and my...