When I Used to be a Little Girl

Sometimes I would just walk around in circles,
tell stories inside my head. I went downstairs into the basement,
so that I wasn’t interrupted by the noises.

The basement was a big concrete floor with boxes
and old clothes and unorganized storage bins
filled with letters and ripped out hearts.

I was in that space where it was just the floor
and my mind and my legs and I was walking around in my circles,
telling my story, focused on what was going on inside my brain.

When I finally glanced down, there was a circle shape
of blood on the floor. It was dripping from in between
my legs, brightening the cold concrete surroundings.

By Juliet Cook

Biography:

Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, including Arsenic Lobster, DIAGRAM, Diode, FLAPPERHOUSE, Hermeneutic Chaos, Menacing Hedge and Reality Beach. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaboration with Robert Cole called MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), and a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), with two more forthcoming. Cook’s first full-length individual poetry book, “Horrific Confection”, was published by BlazeVOX and her second full-length individual poetry book, “Malformed Confetti” is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. Her most recent full-length poetry book, “A Red Witch, Every Which Way”, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016. Find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.