I used piano keys as dentures
and my breasts were rubber balloons.
My lips were red from the blood of men
And I kept secrets like
Cleopatra.

I crunched bones with my toes
My father was gasping.
I never learned to love
until I learned to loathe.

I know, darling,
that you fear my fire
you dread my descent into madness
just as a pedestrian
will shield himself
from a head-on vehicle –
inescapable
and yet he
raises his fumbling, bony
hands over his eyes,
his nose,
his teeth …
as if her force will
hush itself at the flesh of his weakness.

I was inferno-eyed
I never felt a thing
I demolished princess towers
with a gust of breath
I voiced my aria into the sky.