A flame was never meant to extinguish this abruptly.
Starved of oxygen, your origami letters became ash in a mouth that bled (for too many years).
I would say goodbye, but the word is a branding iron razed against a smoldering tongue.
Forgiveness never came easily for the dead.
Graveyards are full of grudges and barely concealed debts.
When I told you that I loved you, I disguised the words (behind shattered glass bottles and origami letters confettied like New Year’s).
I remember your eyes cold like marbles, frozen like winter ponds.
(I made a half-joke and thought myself funny, but your lips never curled up in a smile.)
This is autobiography, but all you ever asked for was a poem or a story (but not this – not an obituary or elegy).
I could never say goodbye. I ran from endings & ripped the last page out of every book I ever read.
Sometimes, I wrote stories that ended in the middle of a
Isabelle Palerma 