134: Between Doing and Doing

There is a particular sense of dread associated with blood in the shower. You stand under the pounding water, hands deep in shampooed hair that looks like a particularly tasteless meringue, when you feel the cold clog in the back of your throat. Peering down along your nose, you swipe the back of your hand across your face. It comes away watery red.

Now you usually have two options: either you pinch your nose, shut off the water, stumble out, wipe a hand, grab a wad of toilet paper to hold your nose, and sit on the cold lid of the toilet and wait for the blood to stop running so you can rinse the shampoo out of your hair; or you stay in the shower, pinch your nose, tilt your head, and wait under the pounding water until you think the blood has stopped, but you are still not sure because any droplet coating your upper lip might be blood and it all tastes funny and when you wash your hands and face it looks like a minor crime scene from some Netflix series you watched while making dinner.

Either way it is like being stuck in traffic when you are late for work, or when someone in the shopping queue in front of you have a cartload to scan and none of the bar codes work, or when the meeting should have ended ten minutes ago but someone still thinks that the topic needs debating. 

You have to wait.

Wait for the blood to stop. Wait for everything to run properly again. Wait for the dreadful wait to end.

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Written by: Katrine Hjulstad

Instagram: @katrinehjulstad

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Note: Originally published with The Quarantine Journal.

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Publisher's note: Please note that all poetry published with Eudaemonia Records has been seen by our editors, and that the editors have suggested revisions where they see fit, but we believe that it is ultimately the writer's decision to accept or reject any suggestions and take no responsibility for which suggestions they accept or reject.