A scar takes cover under a left-eye wrinkle.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” she says.
She takes her head in both hands,
squeezes it like a pimple.
“I’m getting so crazy,
I could eat nails,” she adds.

The bar is dark enough to hide
the bruise on her right cheek
but the cozy candle is too much
of an attraction for her right hand.
It wants to dunk in that flame
like a donut in coffee.
I grab her wrist and pull it away.

“What am I gonna do,”
she keeps saying.
“Move out? Please.
Where am I gonna go?”

Five years they’ve been together.
And they have a kid.
“I don’t see it getting any better,” she adds.

She reckons she’ll be
in the crazy house before she’s much older.
Or dead.
Or in jail for stabbing
the guy in the heart.

Her hand starts another wobbly journey
toward that open flame.
She’d love to see the fire
bursting out of her body in all directions.

“It ain’t right to feel like this” she sighs.
“Like I got no choices.
Like I’m stuck with who I am and there’s no changing it.
Like even the worst is the best that I can do.”

She looks me up and down and smiles,
“You know,” she says, “if I was better looking,
we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

# # #

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.

**photo credit: Terri Malone