I have yet to admit to myself that my insides are disgusting.

I found a book of poems by Audre Lorde on my mother’s bookshelf, long after she became a figure branded in my brain. There was a bookmark inside, that said “Bloodroot”, a vegetarian restaurant/bookstore.

I want to go there.

I wonder what it would smell like.

I just looked it up. I guess its in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I don’t know when my mother went there. I wonder how old she was; I wonder if she spent hours in that store. I found a picture on the website. It looks nice. It has photographs of women everywhere. There is a corner with a chair that I bet my mother sat in. She loves corners. Everything there looks like it’s covered in glass, but it doesn’t seem to the place you have to tiptoe in. Like if glass was not fragile. That’s what it feels like.

I am so aware of my short sentences, and my long hair, and that my eyes hurt today.

I think I will go to Connecticut to buy a book soon if I can.

Blood roots.

blue veins.

Blood.

Root.