:: Caspierre De Tindre :: D8 :: DONE ::

The Absence of Factor VIII

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I: Beginnings

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You start somewhere
And end somewhere else.
Your bones fuse together quicker than you would have imagined,
Coxic and femurs strengthening as they have done since the first bones were formed.
Though you have a brain that can dream and eyelids that could open and fingernails that one could colour,
Though you have had life in your cells for near nine months now,
You are simplistic, rudimentary.
You are lacking knee caps and toe bones,
The ability to focus your eyes or control your regurgitation.
These things will form, with time.
Other things will not.

You will not learn how to do calculus
You will never milk a goat or fell a tree
Your body will not gain the flexibility to do back flips
And your blood will never learn to clot.
Isn’t it strange that something that never happens is what forms the backbone of your life?

II: Love

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Once, they called it haemophilia
Which meant love of blood.
You find this appropriate in a way
Because you love your blood
But it does not love you back.
Now, it does not have a name.
It has nothing.
No hands with which to hold onto your body,
No mind with which to tell you the nature of its genetic past.
It has no history where you are concerned.
You have not learnt about
The Russian Royals;
Blood transfusions;
HIV;
Your grandfather, who died of the very same love,
Or lack of love, depending on whose point of view you take.

III: Glass

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You didn’t know about It for a while.
Only child, hard to conceive, painful pregnancy
And so, wrapped in cotton wool
You enter the world.
They love you so much
Your mother, a wool spinner
And your father, a glassblower
Chasing his dream.
You are their son, but also their sun.
Every cough is a cause for concern,
Every sniffle the start of a debilitating pneumonia.
They have no idea that in your spindly limbs
Your blood is water thin
Something that, genetically, is their fault.

It is not until 52 times you have watched Sunday come and go
That your parents begin to suspect anything.
When you crawl across the floor
Dirty purple patches appear on your knees and palms
Evidence of the filth in your blood.
When you chew on food
Red marks whisper across your gums
Trying their hardest to tell a story
To which no one will listen.
They will not be translated until
You crawl into your fathers glass cabinet
And the works of which he is proudest
wrap themselves like red ribbons around your skin.
How you survive will always be a mystery.
‘Lucky to be alive,’ they say
‘lucky to access the hospital’ others reply
‘God’s grace,’ you are told, time and time again
But you don’t see the point in that.
If He were to want you to live,
wouldn’t He have made you better in the first place?
But still, with every small nick, you flow your rivers,
Dykes and brooks and eddies of blood.

IV: Iliad V. 364–382

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B

lood follow'd, but immortal; ichor pure,
Such as the blest inhabitants of heav'n
May bleed, nectareous; for the Gods eat not
Man's food, nor slake as he with sable wine
Their thirst, thence bloodless and from death exempt

- Homer

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V: Deposits

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You produce one hundred billion red blood cells every minute
Your strongest muscle is your tounge and, only if called upon, you know how to use it.
Your sneezes exceed 100 miles per hour, but with both your parents working because they need the money for your drugs, and unable to go out and meet people, there is rarely anyone around to hear them.
You are part of the sixty six percent of humanity that cannot see perfectly, as is illustrated by thin wire spectacles upon your nose.
Your brain uses the same amount of power as a ten watt lightbulb, and you’re always using it.
Your amygdala is responsible for your lack of ability to read the emotions on others faces, but that could just be due to the fact that you’re not used to strangers and how they react.

VI: Daffodils in January

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You walk together in a comfortable silence
Hands brushing occasionally,
And although the snowdrifts are thick
You have never felt more melted in your life.
You know you’re not meant to leave the house without asking your parents,
But what harm can come to you with six inches of snow cushioning the ground?
The sour wind waxes a smile onto your face,
Just a small one, but a smile nonetheless.
You know her name and her favourite books and not much else.
You know that she is fascinated from the way she kneels towards the ground,
Watching green heads poke through the snow,
Defying that which tries to drown them.
You kneel too, amazed by their strength,
By the fact that, like you, they too should be dead.
And then you ruin it by scratching your hand on a twig which you had not noticed.
And you show her the way you bleed.
And you trail red pearl-drops of blood
Like petals on the frozen ground.

VII: Carcass

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You were six
And you found the body of a rabbit
On the side of the road
Hit by a vehicle
Drowning in its own blood.
You were six
And you realised that you were going to die in a similar manner
Covered in your poor-quality blood
In a place that you had always been scared of:
Alone.

IX: Credits

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Idea from Katrina Vandenberg’s wonderful Atlas
Factor IV : Homer, (trans. William Cowper) (1802). Johnson, John. ed. The Iliad of Homer, Translated into English Blank Verse. Volume 1. Iliad V. 364–382 (p. 153).
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