When Lilith asked me if I also like the taste of my own blood

When Lilith asked me if I also like the taste of my own blood,

she was leaned over the bathroom sink
piercing her ear. The little red river trickled down her cheek, staining her crooked teeth pink.

Yes, I think most people do.

The biblically accurate angel tattoo twisted
on her back, skin thickened by black market estrogen. She slipped the silver hoop in the raw wound.

Do you want one too?

Yes

Are you sure?

No. But
do it anyway.

That’s the spirit,

she said, and granted a wish I’d deferred

for a decade in ten painless seconds.

I swam in the Danube every day that summer, had to remove the stud from the infection
by September, so desperate was I
to rinse her out of me.

But someone new kisses my left earlobe and the divot of scar tissue is still tangible like the quiet awareness of my own worth she unknowingly pierced into my cartilage.

A decision so reckless
yet easy to make –
a lifetime of hesitation punctured and bloodied
by one hastily sterilized needle – a body modification.

Such was my love for her.