They have shed the blood of your holy people and your prophets,
    and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.

Red with blood, the seas, and red the waters that run into and out of it, red and white the delicate lace things that wave in the current, floating ribbons of pink-white flesh in streamers around them, half-hair, half-flesh, half-beast, half-plant. The quiet inhale exhale of the suction, the patient boredom of the samaritan, eyes intent but unworried behind her mask; metal along the ocean floor.

Red and rich the seas, ripe with life, teeming, twitching life, furrowed against the grain, bringing forth every fruit and every fowl, every tree, every leviathan, rising to swallow the land, to make it new, to bring it forth wet and squalling; delicate metal, wash of water in, water out between the stirrups.

Pain enough; the injections the samaritans dispense numb but do not soothe. Flex of muscle beneath the belly, intermittent, unending, pinch of forceps, rod, speculum, suction. Sutures. The light bleeding in around the corner is white, harsh, and dry; it bites at fingers, toes, ears and lips, bare skin. Salty as the sea, as new life, as old; she clenches hands against the table and endures.