Content warning: Mentions of blood, Biblical allusions

Encounter with the Feminine Products Bin in the Work Bathroom

Deposit your relics of Venus in this receptacle
Explains the simple diagram
And I realize that I arrived
Not for the first time
At the wrong altar
I rifle through my pockets
Checking for trinkets of Diana
An apple for Aphrodite
Even a lock of hair for Hera

But I have long since shorn myself short as Samson
Devoured fruit down to their cores, sucking at their seeds
And any trinkets are worn by those same lovers, with great gratitude

I know that what this altar/brazier/church truly demands is blood
And I wonder if just a wall away
Mars demands the same of my coworkers

Still squeamish, I relinquish
An ounce of my vitality
Knowing I’ll return in an hour’s time
For my goddess is hungry

What am I buying with this sacrifice?
I wonder

Cheeks a bit paler
Steel toes drooping
I return

About the author

Kaia Ball (they/them) crafts fiction with a scientist’s attention, nonfiction with an artist’s panache, and poetry as a love story to life itself. Their poetry, essays, and speculative fiction have been published in Electric Literature, Snowflake Magazine, New Reader Magazine, & beyond. Find them at kaia-ball.com & @kaiaballwrites.bsky.social

Photo by Buchen WANG on Unsplash.