From the needle to the tube, the venous highway, marrow-born. Blood is blood, formerly sanguine: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Platelets and plasma. Nesting dolls of salts, proteins, fats, sugars. By blood, we mean loyalty, injury, oxygen, ancestors. Antibodies and hormones. On the bed sheet, Band-Aid. Tissue in the wastecan. A one way system. By blood, the ancients mean elixir of life, bloodletting, ichor. And heat, blood carries heat.
My parent’s bedroom was museum and mausoleum. The nurse-ghost worked graveyard, emptying her pockets on the vanity, then soaking her white uniform in a bathtub of bleach water. I counted the earthy pennies, opened and closed the hemostat clamps, tied a tourniquet one-handed and with my teeth. Watched my fingertips pink up.
glycated A1C: 7.2 ABNORMAL (range < 5.7)
O+ AB- O- A+
ketones 2.6 LARGE (range < .1)
02 = 99%
male: 4.35 trillion to 5.65 trillion red blood cells/L
fasting glucose 209 ABNORMAL (range 70-99)
Is it better to be the universal donor or the universal recipient
from Bodies: The Exhibition:
24,901 miles (the earth’s circumference) x 2 = venules and veins
stretched end to end at
60,000 miles more than
wraps the earth twice
a one way system, circle, circulatory,
circumference, encircled
O
O and O
