Blood

What is a cold-blooded animal? One that is dependant upon the outer world to regulate its warmth. So cold-bloodedness is intricately bound up with vulnerability and one's immediate reaction to the environment.

What of iguanas?
Do they rely upon others to provoke emotion within themselves?

My father and I would lie in the sun, the sun parching us into an itchy leather, the blood flushing into the dark maroon birthmark we sported on our left shoulder, draining the color from our hair. Glassy greyish sandchiggers would circulate about us, wriggling into the dirt, skittering across us.

Wystan and Marilyn would peer at us from within the house as they walked from room to room, attempting to find the coolest mats, the coldest drink, the largest hat and fan.

They were transparent, convalescent: I told my father that they had the blue veins and we had the arteries which, my father assured me, were red because they were iron rich with oxygen.

I know a joke about blood, he says,why don't men trust women?
I don't know, I say.
He smiles then says, Would you trust anything that bled for five days and didn't die?

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