Ani DiFranco Follow

Sitting in the boardroom
The 'I'm-so-bored' room
Listening to the suits
Talk about their world

They can make straight lines
Out of almost anything
Except for the line of my upper lip when it curls
Dressed in my best greasy skin and squinty eyes

I'm the only part of summer here
That made it inside
In the air-conditioned building
Decorated with corporate flair

I wonder
Can these boys smell me bleeding
Though my underwear?

There's men wearing the blood
Of the women they love
There's white wearing the blood of the brown
But every woman learns to bleed from the moon

And we bleed to renew life
Every time it's cut down
I got my vertebrae all stacked up
As high as they go

I but I still feel myself sliding
From the earth that I know
So I excuse myself and leave the room
Say my period came early
But it's not a minute too soon

I go and find the only other woman on the floor
Is the secretary sitting at the desk by the door
I ask her if she's got a tampon I could use
She says, "Oh honey, what a hassle for you
Sure I do, you know I do"

I say, "It ain't no hassle, no, it ain't no mess
Right now it's the only power that I possess
These businessmen got the money
They got the instruments of death
But I can make life, I can make breath"

Sitting in the boardroom
The 'I'm-so-bored' room
Listening to the suits talk about their world
I didn't really have much to say
The whole time I was there

So I just left a big brown bloodstain
On their white chair