Poetry by Christine Naprava

                ​Marketa CC


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Because You Are No Longer Here to Answer

So, whenever setting fire to one’s self is mentioned
as a form of self-harm 
and a cool-toned, collective voice declares, “I’ve heard of that,
but I’ve never known anyone who’s actually done that,”
I will be the anomaly who declares, “I knew somebody
who did that,”
and somebody will inevitably blurt out, “How exactly does that work?”
and I will feign muteness for you, 
I will not give them the satisfaction of knowing
how you took your harm,
and they will press,
paint an image of a teenage you, 
the steady flame of a 
Zippo lighter
dancing with the skin of your wrist,
because it always has to be the wrist, doesn’t it,
and they will not know that I too 
am painting a similar image, 
one less cruel,
one more you.

You let me in 
in bits and pieces,
never revealed to me if you were
a Bic guy or a Zippo guy,
if the initial sensation felt the best
or if the burns, first- and second-degree,
all the bubbled-up scars, 
were better.
You gave me no choice but to assume
your mother was a smoker.
A toddler you getting into her pocketbook,
her red plastic cigarette lighter 
burning an invisible hole
in your tiny, flexing palm, 
an impulse planted,
stowed away for later.

I wonder, 
with the rest of them,
if this image is you.

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Christine Naprava is a writer from South Jersey. Her work has appeared in Soundings East and Studio One.

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