My feces know things about me I do not know.

Before flushing I look down.

Often I do not see enough of what I want to see. Turds seem to be in a hurry to be flushed away and join their fellow turds. Their cities the sewers are roomier and turds can melt and flow. Often I see just half a turd or a third of a turd emerging from the bottom of the bowl.

I can produce two or three turds each time. Once I produced four and never felt prouder, emptier.

I never make coffee, do not need to. Coffee is made in the neighborhood before lawnmowers are turned on. It smells differently from house to house, and all smells join and filter through the screens and reach my nostrils. Nostrils dilate, anus dilates.

I am fond of my anus. It has a tight and docile quality. Lets out but never lets in.

Years ago a nurse had to use her long-nailed middle finger to insert a suppository in me.

A woman Marisa I met last year insisted on exploring my anus with her fingers, my buchino as she called it. You will like it, she insisted. She had long painted nails and reminded me of the nurse. I had to stop seeing her, because of the words she was using to name parts of my body: testolina for my head, braccetto for my arm, culino for my butt, occhietti for my eyes, manuccia for my hands. Marisa had a wide mouth where I could see my leg or arm being swallowed.

Before flushing I looked down.

I saw a cut on the surface of the turd, of a darker color. I looked closer: blood.

Blood always surprises me, being darker than I think. The blood clot was hidden inside the turd. For all I know the turd could have been full of blood. I should have broken it with a fork or a knife to check.

I need to locate the origin of blood. I cannot work or sleep until I know if it is stomach or colon. I called Marisa and she said I probably scratched my anus with my nails or ate something that scratched it. I borrowed a couple books from the library but found nothing useful. The doctor would ask me questions instead of answering mine, so forget it.

My neighbor’s head is in the window. I am in the house and he is out but he is looking at me as if I am the one out. He works in his backyard all the time: all I see is a head go back and forth.

Head leans over, entering the frame of the window.

Cut myself with the lawnmower, he says.

Next to the head rises a hand. I see blood on the middle finger.

I look down at my feces in the bowl, where evening shadows gather. No cuts on the surface this time. I take a knife and cut the turd: no trace of blood.

I gave the neighbor a band-aid. The head keeps going back and forth.

The head of an old woman hit by a car split open. We saw the woman in the air, a body with spinning arms like a huge pigeon. We run to see where she fell, my hand in my nanny’s fist. Blood flew out of the woman, a little black river. When blood reached the asphalt little bubbles formed on the surface. The little river kept flowing when we left. The nanny took my hand and said I had seen enough.

One thing I knew then: blood is inside. There is a lot of blood in, a river. A body is a spring when blood finds its way out: car or knife or bullet or scissors or paper or pin.

One thing I know now: blood wants out. There is a lot of blood out, rivers. I expect to open my mouth and speak blood one of these days. That is why we move. The neighbor walks behind his lawnmower because his blood wants out, pushes his torso, feet, arms forward.

My blood and my neighbor’s are running to melt with other blood and flow into the ocean.