Poetry

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

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.

Isabelle Palerma

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

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.