they tell me I cannot donate, stamping
the word
……………..REJECTED in red across my
wrist like a branding iron, but less superficial.
I had felt an obligation to sign up, because
I was a universal donor—a term which,
I recognized, was quite ego-inflating;
……………..perhaps, I mused, I could play savior,
and be needed, and be one of many.
I thought there might be something poetic in
seeing the blood move from one shriveled
bag to another,
……………..skin like plastic and vice versa,
or at least, I figured it’d make me a better poet,
to say my heart had beat outside of me;
yet, in the reflection of fluorescent
……………..lights on the linoleum floors I saw
……………..……………..my resolve begin to crumble.
the needle hadn’t even broken skin yet
but I realized I’d been bleeding since I
……………..crossed the threshold, because I am very
good at it, and it is all I know how to do—
……………..to be bloodlet, to be
needed, to receive nothing (save
a bandage and a lollipop) in return.
……………..I suppose I had something to prove.
I suppose in my solitude I
strove for the title of universality.
……………..but for a poet I am unnaturally squeamish,
so I felt the process would be unpleasant,
……………..because it always is, though I never
notice it until it is over and through,
……………..and I stand up to find there is no feeling in my legs.
like I said, I had something to prove.
………so, when they stamp me and say
………something about low iron, I hear
hamlet echo “except my life, except my life”—
………accept my life,
that which thrums through my veins, I beg the nurse.
accept it, intertwine with it, let it be taken by someone
who wants it and is grateful for it,
someone who will not take it all and
cut his limbs off right after.
I suppose I was disappointed because
I assumed that
……………..universality
……………..would ensure compatibility,
……………..would protect me from rejection.
I once heard that prisoners of war
would be used as sources of blood transfusions
for enemy soldiers, drained until death.
a friend argued that the prisoners would be more
valuable alive, as endless sources of blood.
I told her it is more economical to perceive
people as single-use objects.
human husks are better discarded than revitalized, I said.
besides, where the blood came from
never really mattered,
……………..not to the soldiers, anyway.

– Jamie Lu