Edge of the Roof

Black sky etched in permanent marker blood,

a canvas to Madeleine’s smoking gaze;

rose-tinted eyeballs, leather jeans and hood,

blonde-hair wrecked under the frenzied moon’s phase.

Raking her dead manicure across pipes

usually glutted with nature’s skinned parts,

her teenage fists pound in manic hypes.

Flawed reception through psychiatry’s arts

abandons love; she’s labeled ‘BP case.’

Remember at the dinner table, “Mom,

can you pass the silver knife before grace?”

She acquired it above her wrist, not palm,

and still nobody saw it on her face.

Teardrops burn the roof like acidic rain

beside Madeleine, a cliff-hanging plane.