by Hailie Cochran
…the womb [is] a female viscus closely resembling an animal, for it is moved of itself hither and thither…in a word, it is altogether erratic…it is like an animal within an animal.
—Aretaeus of Cappadocia, On the Causes and Symptoms of Acute Diseases—Book II, Ch. XI: On Hysterical Suffocation
When Kaylie got her IUD, a cold-
fingered doctor jammed the thing
into her cervix without any anesthetic—
told her to take Tylenol before and
after. She bled out for weeks—every
day for a whole month she bled
through thick denim, twin-XL
mattress, fishnet stockings, multiple
super-plus tampons, her hands—
enough blood to last four moons,
all gone in one. She bought a fish
made of iron—boiled it with pasta
to remedy the new fainting spells.
I gave her the last of my vitamins
and let her hog the heating pad until
my own animal started its flood.
To distract from our pains, we
took turns digging hungry fingers
into each other’s shoulders, spines—
each patch of taut skin becoming soil,
fertile land—not to own—but to sow
life back into ourselves—it takes
a village platitude ringing true in tune
with a laugh-track-sitcom theme song,
in time with our aging like the wine
boxed on our coffee table and sloshing
out of our thrifted mugs as we play
telephone with fluffy campus gossip
and get high on hair dye fumes—
singing, off-key, I’ll be there for you…
Hailie Cochran is an emerging poet from Macon, Georgia and an MFA candidate at UNC Greensboro. She earned her bachelor’s in English and creative writing from Mercer University in 2023. Her work appears in publications both online and in print—including Petal Projections, Outrageous Fortune, As Alive Journal, and elsewhere. Between writing sessions, she can be found at local breweries with her fiancé, Sean.