With the weather turning warmer and drier, it’s nosebleed season again up in Miho’s sinuses. Agh. Just when I’d thought I’d finally grown out of it!
That said, it inspired me to write the following passage. No, I’ve never been punched in the face before (nor ever will be, here’s hoping), but I got a flash of what it must be like…
Getting punched in the mouth:
Blood, fresh blood smells metallic, there’s a pungent note to it.
It tastes thick, dry, corrosive and grating running down the back of your throat.
It’s the rust, your blood turning to rust.
No longer contained inside your body, ruptured from the safety of its vessels and exposed to the elements, its iron rich cells oxidises en masse with every pulse pumped out from the breach.
When your face has been punched in. Nose broken, the fleshy pink insides of your mouth minced against your own shattered teeth, the stuff’s everywhere, and it keeps coming, it keeps flowing, red and hot, coating your lips and tongue to drip from your chin and tonsils, inside and out, all at the same time.
Back there the blood globs up your nostrils and all the way down your airway. Out here, in the open, it coagulates then crusticulates engraining itself into every fissure of your skin, dried by air and self generated heat.
And the heat, your whole face is pulsing heat, swollen heat, but you keep calm, because you know getting angry will only worsen the flow.
You are the calmest person in the room amid the screaming. There’s a woman crying. And all the people around you, crowding, looking down with clean unbreached faces, intact faces but they are faces crumpled with fear. Amid this you are Zen. You look up and ask softly, politely, if anyone has a clean tissue and some water.
