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.

 

by Alison Lanier

 

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.

 

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