Lingering Regrets: a Poem

Every syllable, every plosive shatters the remnants of once held promises.
Shards of broken vows pirouette across the rubber of my tongue.
Each word a lacerating cut like a needle,
like the fine lines etched into my palm for an oracle’s prophecy or an artist’s sketch.
My mouth tastes of iron and of rust, and my head is a beehive, swarming with thought.

My name is Regret — don’t you have a few?
As imperfect as you were, do you ever carry the weight of remorse?
Of course you can’t answer.
The ghosts never respond to me.
I’m alone in my grief & in my solitude, I cannot beckon Lazarus to awaken from his slumber.
This is my greatest sin —
for which there is no redemption.

Isabelle Palerma

Imperfections

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my art and my writing. I have found sketch pads and notebooks where I have ripped out nearly every single page because I was expecting perfection out of myself. What a lofty goal – perfection ten out of ten times? It was ludicrous. I realized I stopped enjoying the process when I was so focused on the outcome.

It took me some time, and a lot of journaling, to revitalize my love for writing and art as a process. I spent today working on a painting where I told myself, no matter what, I was going to keep it and not throw it away. I accidentally spilled a blotch of purple paint on the corner and my first thought was that I needed to fix it, but instead, I just lived with it. And you know what? All Hell didn’t break loose. I survived, and the painting survived too.

I used to have a friend who said, “It’s not in spite of our flaws that we’re wonderful, it’s because of them.” And that’s the attitude I’m bringing into the new year. I’m enjoying my imperfections, whether it’s in my poetry, fiction, or art. I stopped creating for so long because I was expecting too much out of myself.

Now, I’m back to simply enjoying the process – no matter what the outcome may be.

Isabelle Palerma

2023: a Year of Independence

To recap 2023, I moved to Independence, Missouri, in the last few weeks of December 2022 and started the new year with a brand new beginning. I left everything and everyone I knew to try a fresh start.

I lived with a roommate in Independence for a couple of months before we quickly learned how incompatible we were. I had a couple of jobs and worked on my writing.

For a few months, I just kept my nose to the grindstone, job searching, writing, making new friends, and creating art.

All the while, I was dealing with a bully who spread rumors about me and devastated my self esteem, which resulted in me tearing down this website and rebuilding it from scratch.

I let her erode at my self esteem until there was nothing of me left, and I was hospitalized. I was hospitalized twice last year because of my issues with my mental health.

I struggled immensely with being so far from my family and my loved ones, but I found a way – I continued to work hard and got a publishing offer on my debut novel and my poetry chapbook.

I made new friends while living in Kansas City and met a lot of great and memorable people. I experienced a lot of amazing things, whether meeting film directors and actors from genre films who encouraged me to shoot my own movies or going to see an aerial performance in an ice crystal cave.

I met people like the Mormon who wanted to marry me or the girl who took me to expensive lingerie boutiques and went swimming with me long after the pool had closed.

It was a year of ups and downs, but most importantly, it was a year of growth and new experiences.

We’ll see what 2024 holds.

Isabelle Palerma

News!

My poem about my grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s is being published in an anthology, Forgotten Fragments of Time, to raise money and awareness about the disease, and I just found out a small press has accepted Catching Dreams, my debut novel!

They want to publish my book. My baby. The one that has been formulating in my mind since I was twelve and having vivid dreams about my grandpa after he died. The book that all began because I kept asking myself, “What if?”

They want to publish it. I never thought I’d be a traditionally published author, but here I am with a contract coming my way.

Isabelle Palerma

Serenade to the Dead and the Damned: a Poem

Love is a Ouija board for the lost souls and the damned —
I will not surrender my planchette if it means giving control to the ghosts.
I contain within me a cemetery with anonymous tombstone and nameless crypts.
I thought mausoleums were meant to be quiet & this one is as loud as a burlesque hall.

You are a ghost & I cannot commit to a life
of haunting.

Seances never felt like homecomings but I gave you my last dance – those nights always scented of clove cigarettes and nostalgia heavy like cologne –

I remember watching the moon cut through trees and thought myself a spirit drifting in & out of your life.