Runner: a Poem

I’m writing absences where
your heart used to lie,
lacunae where stars used to soar.
You were my sanctuary,
& I thought I believed in
forever.

None of this is broken,
but sometimes, parts of me
fracture.

Every time I try to write,
memories of who I was or
who I could be resurrect
like Lazarus from a tomb.

My skin is barely hanging on my body & I have grown frail.
My desires are no longer carnal,
and my rage no longer violent.
(She told me the years would soften me like overripe fruit,
and I denied it like my hard edges
have an advantage.)

Now, here we are at the gates
and Peter interrogates me —
he asks me why I harbored so much hate,
but even if I have forgiven,
I couldn’t be lace and be defined by my empty spaces.

I feel like I’ve ruptured,
and a part of me will never be the same.
I’ve said it before, so maybe I’ll say it again,
a fabulist isn’t always a liar —
sometimes, just a storyteller.

I followed this line until it fractured
and you taught me about the
fault lines I never grew up along.
He asked me if I still smell like
autumn,
and people clamored to say
hazelnut coffee or brittle fall leaves.
I never knew who I was,
only what others saw.

I couldn’t be lace.
I read through the doctor’s notes
and they all diagnosed me the same –

a tired cliché.

This isn’t Plath nor will it ever be,
but the most I can ever ask for
is someone to love me as I am,
to take me into their arms,
and not to simply tolerate –
not to merely accept –
but to cherish, to celebrate,
to worship, & to love.

You gathered all these different parts of me,
all the different eras,
and you saw who I was reflected through each,
and you swore you’d stay
(as long as I didn’t push too hard).

I’ve been pushing people away
for centuries now,
and I’m tired.

This certainly isn’t the poem I started,
but now that you see me clearly,
tell me –
will you be the one to run?

Isabelle Palerma

The Scent of Loss

The sky is the black of a bruised plum with a cobweb of stars scattered across it. The air no longer smells of stale cigarette smoke nor does it smell of his pungent cologne. It was a cologne kept in a green glass bottle on a high shelf that you sometimes uncorked to marvel at the power of its scent.

The air is empty. It smells of dry, autumnal leaves, and there is a chill. It makes you wish you were at a bonfire or anywhere but here. You are curled up on a reclining chair, wearing your favorite sweatshirt. Inside, there is no fire roaring in the fireplace like usual on a Friday night.

There is no fresh homemade bread baking in the oven. All the grown-ups are outside. Your mother’s eyes are bloodshot from crying. Even your father’s eyes are red-rimmed.

The moment is dark and heavy.

It as though they have forgotten you curled up in your favorite chair. You slip out the garage door past the knot of adults. You plop onto a gigantic geode that sits in the rock garden in the front yard, its many facets shine in the silver of the moon. As you inhale the air, you smell other fires in other people’s fireplaces.

You think of bonfires and candy apples and of Halloween. Halloween is only eight days away. You think of your costume still in its bag slung over your chair in the bedroom. You begin to hate Halloween. The red pencil you are writing with is the only sound as it scratches against the bone-white paper.

You tell yourself you will never forget this feeling, this moment. He is gone, and the world as you know it ceases to exist.

Darkness closes around you, but you do not cry. Though you are only eleven, you are aware of the darkness inside and outside of you. The air is empty.

The night is cold, and you are alone.

Isabelle Palerma

DV Awareness

October is usually saturated with pink for breast cancer awareness, but October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The purple ribbon always reminds me of the line of bruises his knuckles left on my stomach.

I try to speak about my abuse broadly so not to trigger any survivors, but please read with caution if this topic is a sensitive one for you.

I am a survivor. I was only with him for less than a year, but that type of abuse knows no timeline. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been with a person. This type of abuse, like most, thrives in the dark and the shadows.

Some people ask me why I share my story. I’ve been accused of using my status as a survivor to garner sympathy, but this is just a page in my memoirs – not the entire story. The reason I share it is to bring awareness to the problem. To show people how it can happen to anyone.

I thought I was smart enough not to let it happen to me. I thought, I’m educated, I’m smart. I’ll leave if it ever gets too bad. But what I didn’t realize was the dangerous hold an abuser has over you.

It’s been over a decade, and I still have nightmares. I don’t know if they will ever go away, but I do know I saved a shard of one of the plates he threw at my head to remind myself that I’d never put myself in that situation again.

It wasn’t just physical. It was mental and sexual and financial. I no longer could afford to leave him. I was trapped.

Getting out was dangerous, but I needed to escape if I was going to live and for months, I was looking over my shoulder, constantly vigilant.

If you are in an unsafe relationship and need resources, I have some available here.

Isabelle Palerma

A Poem from Those Left Behind

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 an elegy. Not a eulogy or a goodbye).

I could never say goodbye. I ran from endings & ripped the last page out of every book I ever read.

Sometimes, I even wrote stories that ended in the middle of a —

Isabelle Palerma

Spitting Matchsticks: a Poem

White knuckle it,
and the pain still sears through these autumnal bones.
Crumble them like my skeleton has memory.
It hasn’t forgotten the calendar days piling up
(as thick as novels).

It’s time to start spitting matchsticks
and not caring about the consequences (the aftermath) of fire.

My ears, stuffed with cotton, muffle the sound
of silent, blood-curdling screams.
I have crushed tears into my palm
and have screamed silently
into lungs of shower stalls
(yet the world still whirls
as though I were flung off a carnival ride).

I wasn’t being coy when I said “no”.
I was being adamant.
My teeth marks in your shoulder blade should serve as a reminder.

I will punch through glass
with words alone.
No amount of duct tape, super glue,
will repair the realms destroyed.

Memories are like binge drinking.
I wake up with my throat burning.
(The ghosts wail outside my house,
rattling the windows and
causing the rafters to shudder.
Begging to be let in.)

He mistook my empty for hollow
and tried to fill me when I was merely seeking fulfillment.

Another left shadows form-fitted to my figure,
lying, saying I was just an angel slut
falling
when really, a shove sent me
flying.
(The truth tastes as rusty as nails and goes down just as smoothly.)

He lied to me about the taste of electricity,
claiming it was a needle to a vein.
And all I ever wanted was the stars to be bright enough,
I never needed a neon sign again
in this town.

These memories are skyscrapers,
and these skyscrapers are leveled by volcanoes.
(And now, I am soaring like a phoenix, above the rubble,
taking me beyond the landscapes I once knew.)
No longer do I care about where these matchsticks may land,
nor who may scorched by the words that sear.