cigarette burns lullaby
Your chest was full of scratches
and the couple upstairs was punishing
our trembling ceiling with their angry bed.
Oh, the sour love-making and the heavy sun,
light's fingers were bruised and sticky,
the spring outside, nebulous and white
was just as bad.
I could feel
my nails
growing and breaking,
my jaw cracking
my runaway blood stream,
going away with the horses.
everyday was
another sack of dirt to our coffins,
a gloomy Sunday meal deal on a desert mall,
a pregnant mother
smoking,
a tearful schoolboy taking gum
out of his hair,
black mist in our lungs,
mirrors on the ceiling in a roadside motel,
soggy bread for the pigeons,
a baby covered with cigarette burns:
all that occupied my mind those days,
the ultimate and supreme
pursuit of peace,
while the faraway moanings kept getting louder
and the ambulances started to come my way.
Text: ©Victoria Bardot, 2013
Image: ©Inka and Niclas
