Kali MarieLamparelli is working on completing her MFA from Lesley University. Her poetry has appeared in Gaslight Magazine and Balancing the Tides.
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Rag
I ask her to walk
another three miles
on bloodied toes,
(ballerina).
I never believe she’s
tired, that maybe she’s
frightened, (dark alleyways,
nights).
She can’t get cold,
even when she has
pneumonia, (fever,
chills).
I take her clothes
from her, she won’t
cry, (she does; I took
her childhood chewed
pink blanket).
I lie, tell her
the condom didn’t break,
even when she has to take
the morning after pill
she can’t cry. (I didn’t go with
her as the doctors said, “But you
only look 12.” She’s 20).
She smokes my agony
dead on a red doorstep.
Slices her wrist; someone
eats an apple.
Even when I screw her
into a wall and leave her
hung, a portrait of
disgust for everyone to
see her seem pathetic
as a cum-filled rag-doll.
I’m 107 days sober
and I’m sorry.