The sins of my past tasted like cigarette smoke
and drinking my depravities straight from the bottle.
My broken bones always set
and the lacerations rarely left a scar,
but your words burn through layers of skin.
I never contemplated my future
until my skull hit the floor after
the guillotine slammed shut.
(I wonder if hindsight is 20/20
when you have less than stellar vision.)
I’m the greatest self-saboteur you’ll meet,
but even before he doused his kisses in gasoline,
I was busy learning how to tape together scorched pages
of a survival guide.
(If a metaphor was ever to be scrawled on my skin,
it’d be written in indelible ink,
the tattoo needle vibrating like a lullaby hum
None of this fountain pen sketching,
drawing ink from a piston.)
I have seen the skies ablaze with fire
because his love was arson
(a torching incineration)
and I was the love he poured gasoline over.
Isabelle Palerma 