Early Blood

(Neither a Rambo movie nor a feministic pondering of menarche.)

I'm up late, or early, or whatever, reading and a mosquito is buzzing relentlessly around my body which is sprawled on my couch. It doesn't seem to light at all the entire time and when it does--seemingly for the first time--I smack the bug, squashing him flat and feeling the squish beneath my palm. When I raise my hand several large and bright red droplets of blood show me that I was wrong. He had landed. And with that realization, I immediately begin to itch.