M E N S A G R A M S

I awoke at three in the morning. I thought maybe I was bleeding to death. The warm red rush was profuse and frightening. In a sleep-induced fog, I ripped a stack of Japanese printing paper into squares and began to make blood stain blots. I stayed with them, watching until they dried, knowing that this would be the last times my body would bleed within a fertile cycle.

In long looking at these ‘mono prints,’ I began to see childlike figures in them. So in pencil I drew my imagined forms into the stains. It was, perhaps, a way of giving birth to the children I knew I would never have. These drawings were not made as a feminist outcry, as some have read them, but were a farewell to a fertile womb.

These Mensagrams will fade over time. The stains are not fixed permanently, as in a traditional photograph. I include them here because they helped to light my way to a new point of arrival.

~ Chehalis Hegner.

Chehalis Hegner © 2010 All Rights Reserved.

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