Unable to sleep,
I think of the funerals I did not attend,
the lovers whose names I have since
forgotten,
colognes which once reduced me
to ash,
and now I lie awake, still,
in this carousel of grief.

My body a war zone, my mind
a racuous storm –
I pick up a paintbrush,
I turn to my typewriter.

I begin to write your name
(in calligraphy)
because logophilia runs in my veins
and ink is in my blood.

Isabelle Palerma