Not in One Day v1.0 (May 1998)

When I was a child, I spoke and wanted, and cut and bled.  We’d mix our blood, little children mixing blood, trying so hard to stay connected, somehow.  We needed flesh and blood and proof , you know? proof, something to ground us.  Blood, basic, primal, we were fixed together.
And, I was a girl who sat on picnic tables, holding onto blood ties from childhood, trying to call it up from under the years.  The blood, I’d try to call the blood up.  I would listen and wait, until I felt it begin to run fast and thick through my body.  All so he would kiss me, on the picnic table, and he would.  This thrilled me.  I remember culminating all blood, later.  I knew that I was female.  We were all bleeding, no need to cut ourselves anymore.  I think I must have stitched myself to boy’s insides and let my rushing red eat away at hormones and hearts.  I might have been careless.
I played the basic picnic table game until I somewhat resented myself, and then, I discovered moments of silence
beauty elevating clarity
with sick hair pulling bright hours.
Watching trains pass, I sat on the tracks playing chess with the dirty river and called myself from the ruined box cars, cracked cement, and fields of clover.
But, in between this time and the other.  I sat on my roof, with the light from my bedroom on my back, naming stars, scribbling most pretentious things into red red journals, and exalting in a kingdom that was not being built in one day.