Balefire

I grew up in a skull of a house pushed against an earthen rise

Where the only beautiful thing was a gas flame

That burned like a tiny blue flower.

Yet I knew it was my princess ring.

I thought I saw a moon bird one night

But it was only a crow against the stark white.

This was the same evening a lunatic wandered

The hillside wearing the black dress

Of Edith Piaf, howling and tossing her blanket.

My birth certificate was in my mother’s drawer

Of underclothes placed beside the condoms.

I sat in a straight back chair facing the window,

Watching darkness fall like a Han-blue window shade.

It was as if in a starless world I had chosen aloneness.