I never told anyone but
I’ll tell you.
About the fire
Folding up my tongue,
The last counted hour
With my stomach shrinking
Toward my graveyard spine.
My body wanted to be pins
And needles,
Balancing voided meals with
Cigarettes. Burn marshmallow
Fat like burning up
S’mores,
Campfire chocolate,
Childhood knobbles
In my rounded knees.
My body was statistical.
It was burned and tarred
And feathered. Monster me,
An under-the-bed story.
Cool dinnertime untruths,
Tamed, lightheaded.
Bless
The daily dizzy shrivel, the
Ribby abdomen poke, the
Airbrush collapse. Spark,
Sear, scissor open
The new pack.
Alison Lanier is a Boston-based writer and graduate of Wellesley College. She recently joined the editorial team at The Critical Flame. Her fiction, reviews, articles, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, Counterpoint Magazine, and The Wellesley Review, where she also served as editor.
