Crank (Crank 1)

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