erasing red marks

 

My hands are giving out.
Last night I quilted 6 hours in a row before going to bed - from 8 pm to 2 am.

I began to bleed from the fingers onto the white cotton and had to repeatedly lick an un-pierced finger with my own saliva in order to erase the small red marks.

This seems like it must be a metaphor for something.
Waiting perhaps,
suffering,
and immediately deleting the red evidence of that
with my own inner water.