your step, a true-blue party killer.
Only this time,
encouraged by the monster,
it blew across the threshold,
smashed down my door.
I staunched the flow, changed
my clothes, and went to tell Adam.
Flustered, flushed,
he swore he didn’t care,
pouted and pleaded and cajoled.
But I was not about
to lose my virginity
in a fountain of
menstrual fluid.
How many times
have I regretted that decision?
But That Day
there was still enough
Kristina left to feel
humiliation
still a smattering of
old-fashioned morals,
somewhere
inside; still a healthy dose
of survival instinct, buried
beneath
a childhood, fractured by
hormones, smashed by
the monster’s
fist and pressed into