the phlebotomist's lover

as he puts the rubber band around my forearm 

i explain that i sometimes faint 

when i have my blood drawn & by sometimes i mean 

that once i went with my mom in 8th grade & 
the nurse tried to tell me that she once took 
Jerry Seinfeld's blood & i didn't know who that was.
i felt as if i were crawling, hands & knees
through a tunnel & then i woke up
to the coral green waiting room.

as he puts the rubber band around my forearm

i want to ask him what his lover thinks of this,

if he or she or they know that each day

he takes the cool sharp needle, tells 

boys like me to "talk to him" & to

"tell me something about yourself." 

i imagine telling him that i associate needles
with family. that each time i have my blood drawn
i see all of the standing in the corner 
of the sterile white room & i mean all of them, 
i mean aunts & grandmom & brothers & mom & dad,
all of them watching me let this man plunge
the needle deep into my arm, blood filling his
vials quickly, a quick gush & nothing more.

as he takes the rubber man away from around my forearm

i try to remember what i told him in that moment

& i think i said that i have a little brother who

is 6 years old (which is a lie, he's 10)
& that he misses me while i'm at college which
is also probably a lie because he doesn't 
know me any different, i've always been in school.

as he takes the rubber man away from around my forearm

i want to as him if it's really over

if all we were was an exchange of blood, if 

at night he lays next to his lover & tells 

them about all the bodies he entered,

holding up his fingers to count them,
maybe stopping as he remembers me. maybe
he skips me because what we had was too alive
to have just been 8 vials of blood.
does he keep one & tell no one?