It Stands For Light

It Stands for Light

Lucia,
Wide hipped at ten,
runaway at eleven.
She only existed between
red cardboard binding
with gold printed letters
It Stands for Light.
She was a-
Smash bottle-pill popper,
temporary high school dropout-
college recluse.
Walls suffocate her,
And suffocation speaks of her mother
draping pink lace around her throat,
a hot curling iron in her hair, and oops
mother has dropped it on her neck.
Oops, broken window/bottle,
passout-sleep.
But Lucia,
Only existed in relation to-

Dollene,
Who did not like her name
at all, until it reached Lamberto.
Even though as a child,
she only associated this being
with lung-cancer and bastard-cousins;
her father’s big nose and wide, hard gut.
He picked a man up once by the neck,
and threatened to cut his throat,
but all he did was sit by passively, when
oops: mother has dropped a curler on the neck.
It was difficult: Really,
being named Dollene, with a mother
named Dorothy-Dolly.
Who dyed her dark hair blonde
and sun-tanned wrinkles into her olive skin.
Which is why, Dollene became
in writing
wide hipped, pill-popping Lucia.